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.

News of the event circulating, the public mind of Bumsteadville lost no
time in deploring the incorrigible depravity of Southern character, and
recollecting several horrors of human Slavery. It was now clearly
remembered that there had once been rumors of terrible cruelties by a