The duck-pond-draining scene (ms 1028) was "direly condensed" AND replaced…

This is a revision: the same material was reworked in substance between draft and print.

In the manuscript. a full draining-of-the-duck-pond scene at ms 1028 — "1028 The draining of the duck pond is for me the hardest scene in the novel to keep reading." Pietsch's proposed fix: cut it and "just say later that AFR found where Joelle was by kidnapping and interviewing her engineer, who knew she'd gone in for treatment? Or direly condensed." Michael Pietsch's December 1994 second-read letter

In the published book. Scene 121 (pp. 620–626)

Evidence. Independently corroborated. (letter + print text).

Bears on. This difference bears on the following open questions: whether the gaps are constitutive design and reconstruction is misreading.

Further notes. The clearest documented case in the record of an editor-proposed replacement adopted as published plot — effectively both of Pietsch's remedies executed (dire condensation of the draining + the say-later engineer solution). Margin layer (interpretive register): red "Why?" (moderately confident) and green underlined "Yes" (clear) beside the 1028 entry; beside the related 1216/1222 questions, blue "Engineer clue." — second word uncertain (clue/chit/ched), unresolved. One earlier record is corrected here: our note on this source had said "no such scene in print"; print in fact keeps the condensed descriptive trace above, hence class revised, not cut.