There is one other fact connected with my father and _Edwin Drood_ that I think my readers would like to know, and I must be forgiven if I again speak from my own experience in order to relate it. Upon reading the book once more, as I have already told, after an interval of a great number of years, the story took such entire possession of me that for a long time I could think of nothing else; and one day, my aunt, Miss Hogarth, being with me, I asked her if she knew anything more definite than I did as to how the ending was to be brought about. For I should explain that when my father was unusually reticent we seldom, if ever, attempted to break his silence by remarks or hints that might lead him to suppose that we were anxious to learn what he had no doubt good reasons for desiring to keep from us. And we made it a point of honour among ourselves never, in talking to him on the subject of _Edwin Drood_, to show the impatience we naturally felt to arrive at the end of so engrossing a tale. My aunt said that she knew absolutely nothing, but she told me that shortly before my father’s death, and after he had been speaking of some difficulty he was in with his work, without explaining what it was, she found it impossible to refrain from asking him, ‘I hope you haven’t really killed poor Edwin Drood?’ To which he gravely replied, ‘I call my book the Mystery, not the History, of Edwin Drood.’ And that was all he would answer. My aunt could not make out from the reply, or from his manner of giving it, whether he wished to convey that the Mystery was to remain a mystery for ever, or if he desired gently to remind her that he would not disclose his secret until the proper time arrived for telling it. But I think his words are so suggestive, and may carry with them so much meaning, that I offer them now, with my aunt’s permission, to those who take a delight in trying to unravel the impenetrable secrets of a story that has within its sadly shortened pages a most curious fascination, and is ‘gifted with invincible force to hold and drag.’ THE TESTIMONY OF CHARLES DICKENS THE YOUNGER I have quoted from Madame Perugini’s statement the words: ‘We know also that my elder brother Charles positively declared that he had heard from his father’s lips that Edwin Drood was dead.’ I proceed to corroborate the statement by giving here a brief account of the play by Joseph Hatton and Charles Dickens.