r was Dick Datchery,
the detective, who discovered so much, before he left her, of Jasper's
London habits that he went home in high good humor.

Datchery had a trick, whenever he was following a particular search, of
marking each step of his progress by a chalk mark on a wall or door.
To-day he must have been highly pleased, for he drew a thick line from
the very top of the cupboard door to the bottom!

* * * * *

_When Charles Dickens, the master story-teller, had told this tale thus
far, he fell ill and died, and it was never finished. The mystery of the
disappearance of Edwin Drood, what became of Rosebud and of Mr.
Crisparkle, how Neville and Helena fared and what was the end of Jasper,
are matters for each one of us to guess. Many have tried to finish this
story and they have ended it in various ways. Before Dickens died,
however, he told to a friend the part of the story that remained
unwritten, and this, the friend has recorded, was to be as follows_:

By means of the old woman of the opium den, Durdles, the tombstone
maker, and The Deputy, the ragged stone-thrower, Dick Datchery unraveled
the threads which finally, made into a net, caught Jasper, the murderer,
in its meshes. Little by little, word by word, he was made at last to
betray himself.

He had killed Edwin Drood, had hidden his body in one of the vaults and
covered it with lime. But there had been one thing in the dead man's
pocket which the lime could not destroy: this was the ring set with
diamonds and rubies, that had been given to him by Mr. Grewgious. By
this the murder was proven. Mr. Crisparkle and Mr. Grewgious worked hard
to clear Neville Landless (of whose guilt, by the way, Mr. Honeythunder
remained always sure), but poor Neville himself perished in aiding
Lieutenant Tartar to seize the murderer.

Finding all hope of escape gone, Jasper confessed his crime in the cell
in which he waited for death.

But, after all, the story closed happily, with the marriage of Mr.
Crisparkle to Neville's sister Helena, and that of Lieutenant Tartar to
pretty little Rosebud.

INDEX TO CHARACTERS

AFFERY _Little Dorrit_

AGNES _David Copperfield_

ALLEN, ARABELLA _Pickwick Papers_

ALLEN, BEN _Pickwick Papers_

"ARTFUL DODGER, THE" _Oliver Twist_

BAGSTOCK, MAJOR