ver seemed in better spirits than
on that day, nor had he ever sung more sweetly than in the afternoon
service before the dinner which he gave to the two young men. If he was
contemplating a terrible crime, no one would have guessed it from his
serene face and his agreeable manner.

Edwin Drood had one warning just before he went up the postern stair
that led to his Uncle Jasper's. The old hag who mixed the opium in the
London garret where the choir master smoked the drug, had more than once
tried to find out who her strange, gentlemanly visitor was. She had
listened to his mutterings in his drunken slumber, and at length that
day had followed him from London to Cloisterham, only to lose track of
him there. As Drood strolled, waiting for the dinner hour to strike from
the cathedral chimes, he passed her and she begged money from him.

He gave it to her and she asked him his name and whether he had a
sweetheart. He answered Edwin, and that he had none. "Be thankful your
name's not Ned," she said, "for it's a bad name and a threatened name!"

"Ned" was the name Jasper always called him by, but Drood did not think
seriously of the old woman's words. He could not have guessed that the
threats she spoke of against the Ned who had a sweetheart had been
murmured in his drugged slumber by his own uncle against himself. And
yet something at just that moment made him shudder.

So the chimes struck, and Edwin Drood went on to Jasper's rooms to meet
his uncle and Neville Landless--went to his doom! For from that time no
one who loved him ever saw him again in this world!

IV

JASPER SHOWS HIS TEETH

That night a fearful tempest howled over Cloisterham. In the morning
early, as the storm was breaking, Jasper, the choir master, came pale,
panting and half-dressed, to Mr. Crisparkle's, asking for Edwin Drood.
He said his nephew had left his rooms the evening before with Neville
Landless to go to the river to look at the storm, and had not returned.

Strange rumors sprang up at once. Neville had left for his walking tour
and an ugly suspicion flew from house to house. He had got only a few
miles from the town when he was overtaken by a party of men, who
surrounded him. Thinking at first that they were thieves, he fought
them, but was soon rendered helpless and bleeding, and in the midst of
them was taken back toward Cloisterham. Mr. Crisparkle and Jasper met
them on the way, and from the former Neville first learned of what h