“Reverend Sir,” he said to the Gospeler, quickly, “in this sad affair we must be just, as well as vigilant I believe Mr. Dibble to be as innocent as ourselves.  Whatever may be his failings so far as liquor is concerned, I wholly acquit him of all guilty knowledge of my nephew and umbrella.”

Too apoplectic with suffocating emotions to speak, Mr. Dibble foamed slightly at the month and tore out a lock or two of his hair.

“And I believe that my unhappy pupil, Mr. Pendragon, is as guiltless,” responded the puzzled Gospeler.  “I do not deny that he had a quarrel with Mr. DROOD, in the earlier part of their acquaintance; but, as you, Mr. Bumstead, yourself, admit, their meeting at the Christmas-Eve dinner was amicable; as I firmly believe their last mysterious parting to have been.”

The organist raised his fine head from the shadow of his right hand, in which it had rested for a moment, and said, gravely:  “I cannot deny, gentlemen, that I have had my terrible distrusts of you all.  Even now, while, in my deepest heart, I release Mr. Dibble and Mr. Pendragon from all suspicion, I cannot entirely rid my mind of the impression that you, Mr. Simpson, in an hour when, from undue indulgence in stimulants, you were not wholly yourself, may have been tempted, by the superior fineness of the alpaca, to slay a young man inexpressibly dear to us all.”

“Great heavens, Mr. Bumstead!” panted the Gospeler, livid with horror, “I never—­”

—­“Not a word, sir!” interrupted the Ritualistic organist,—­“not a word, Reverend sir, or it may be used against you at your trial.”

Pausing not to see whether the equally overwhelmed old lawyer followed him, the horribly astounded Gospeler burst precipitately from the house in wild dismay, and was presently hurrying past the pauper burial-ground.  Whether he had been drawn to that place by some one of the many mystic influences moulding the fates of men, or because it happened to be on his usual way home, let students of psychology and topography decide.  Thereby he was hurrying, at any rate, when a shining object lying upon the ground beside the broken fence, caused him to stop suddenly and pick up the glittering thing.  It was an oroide watch, marked E.D.; and, a few steps further on, a coppery-looking seal-ring also attracted the finder’s grasp.  With these baubles in his hand the genial clergyman was walking more slowly onward, when it abruptly occurred to him, that his possession of such property might possibly subject him to awkward consequences if he did not immediately have somebody arrested in advance.  Perspiring freely at the thought, he hurried to his house, and, there securing the company of Montgomery pendragon, conveyed his beloved pupil at once before Judge Sweeney, and made affidavit of finding the jewelry.  The jeweler, who had wound Edwin DROOD’S watch for him on the day of the dinner, promptly identified the timepiece by the innumerable scratches around the keyhole; Mr. Bumstead, though at first ecstatic with the idea that the seal-ring was a ferule from an umbrella, at length allowed himself to be persuaded into a gloomy recognition of it as a part of his nephew, and Montgomery was detained in custody for further revelations.