Excerpt from The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Master Humphrey's Clock; And Sketches by "Boz" Shaki from head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness has thus fantasti ly pieced itself together at length rises, supports his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He rs in the meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the r ed window-curtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He res, dressed, across a large unseeml bed, upon a bed stead that has indeed given way under the weight upon it. Ying, also dressed and also across the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The two first are in a sleep or stupor the last is blowin at a kind of pipe to kindle it. And as she blows, and. Shading it with her lean and, coneen trates its red Spark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show him what he sees of her. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.