nt, however, manfully and
sorrowfully to Mr. Crisparkle and told him what had occurred, and
naturally Mr. Crisparkle, who had never found Edwin Drood quarrelsome,
thought it the fault of Neville's hot blood and revengeful character.

He was the more certain of this when Jasper came to him, bringing
Neville's hat, and told him his own story of the meeting. Jasper told
him falsely that Neville had made a murderous attack on Drood, and but
for him would have laid his nephew dead at his feet. He warned the
minister that Neville had a tigerish nature and would yet be guilty of
terrible crime. Mr. Crisparkle liked Neville, and all this saddened him,
for he had not the least suspicion that Jasper was lying for a cruel
purpose of his own.

The affair was an unhappy one for Neville. Jasper took care that the
story spread abroad, and as it went it grew, so that almost everybody in
Cloisterham came to consider Helena's brother a sullen fellow of a
furious temper. And they believed it the more because Neville made no
secret of the fact that he had fallen in love, too, with Rosebud, and
in this they thought they saw a reason for his hating Edwin Drood.

Mr. Crisparkle was a faithful friend. He concluded soon that the fault
was not all on Neville's side. But he was anxious to have the two young
men friends, and he begged his pupil for his own part to lay aside the
ill feeling. He went to the choir master also on the same errand, and
Jasper assured him that his nephew would do the same. He even promised,
hypocritically, that to bring this about he would invite both Edwin
Drood and Neville to dine with him on Christmas Eve, in his own rooms,
where they might meet and shake hands.

Both young men promised to come to the dinner, and Mr. Crisparkle was
highly pleased, little dreaming what the outcome would be.

III

THE CHOIR MASTER'S DINNER

There was a quaint character in Cloisterham named Durdles. He was a
stone-mason whose specialty was the chiseling of tombstones. He was an
old bachelor and was both a very skilful workman and a very great sot.
He had keys to all the cathedral vaults and was fond of prowling about
the old pile and its dismal crypt, for ever tap-tapping, with a little
hammer he carried, on its stones and walls, hunting for forgotten
cavities, in which, perhaps, centuries before, persons had been buried.
He wore a coarse flannel suit with horn buttons and a yellow
handkerchief with draggled ends, and it was a