followed the Indians, and saw them safe off the
premises.

Going back by way of the shrubbery, I smelt
tobacco, and found Mr. Franklin and Mr.
Murthwaite (the latter smoking a cheroot)
walking slowly up and down among the trees.
Mr. Franklin beckoned to me to join them.

"This," says Mr. Franklin, presenting me to
the great traveller, "is Gabriel Betteredge, the
old servant and friend of our family, of whom
I spoke to you just now. Tell him, if you
please, what you have just told me."

Mr. Murthwaite took his cheroot out of his
mouth, and leaned, in his weary way, against
the trunk of a tree.

"Mr. Betteredge," he began, "those three
Indians are no more jugglers than you and I
are."

Here was a new surprise! I naturally asked
the traveller if he had ever met with the Indians
before.

"Never," says Mr. Murthwaite; "but I
know what Indian juggling really is. All you
have seen to-night is a very bad and clumsy
imitation of it. Unless, after long experience,
I am utterly mistaken, those men are high-
caste Brahmins. I charged them with being
disguised, and you saw how it told on them,
clever as the Hindoo people are in concealing
their feelings. There is a mystery about their
conduct that I can't explain. They have doubly
sacrificed their caste—first, in crossing the sea;
secondly, in disguising themselves as jugglers.
In the land they live in, that is a tremendous
sacrifice to make. There must be some very
serious motive at the bottom of it, and some
justification of no ordinary kind to plead for
them, in recovery of their caste, when they re-
turn to their own country."

I was struck dumb. Mr. Murthwaite went
on with his cheroot. Mr. Franklin, after what
looked to me like a little private veering about
between the different sides of his character,
broke the silence as follows, speaking in his nice
Italian manner, with his solid English foundation
showing through:

"I feel some hesitation, Mr. Murthwaite, in
troubling you with family matters, in which you
can have no interest, and which I am not very
willing to speak of out of our own circle. But,
after what you have said, I feel bound, in the
interests of Lady Verinder and her daughter, to
tell you something which may possibly put the
clue into your hands. I speak to you in confi-
dence; you will oblige me, I am sure, by not
forgetting that?"

With this preface, he told the Indian traveller
(speaking now in his clear-headed French way)
all that he had told me at the Shivering Sand.
Even the immovable Mr. Murthwaite was so
interested in what he heard, that he let his
cheroot go out.

"Now," says Mr. Franklin, when he had
done, "what does your experience say?"

"My experience," answered the traveller,
"says that you have had more narrow escapes
of your life, Mr. Franklin Blake, than I
have had of mine; and that is saying a great
deal."

It was Mr. Franklin's turn to be astonished
now.

"Is it really as serious as that?" he asked.

"In my opinion it is," answered Mr.
Murthwaite. "I can't doubt, after what you have
told me, that the restoration of the Moonstone to
its place on the forehead of the Indian idol is
the motive and the justification of that sacrifice
of caste which I alluded to just now. Those
men will wait their opportunity with the pa-
tience of cats, and will use it with the ferocity
of tigers. How you have escaped them I can't
imagine," says the eminent traveller, lighting his
cheroot again, and staring hard at Mr. Franklin.
"You have been carrying the Diamond
backwards and forwards, here and in London,
and you are still a living man! Let us try and
account for it. It was daylight, both times, I
suppose, when you took the jewel out of the
bank in London?"

"Broad daylight," says Mr. Franklin.

"And plenty of people in the streets?"

"Plenty."

"You settled, of course, to arrive at Lady
Verinder's house at a certain time? It's a
lonely country between this and the station.
Did you keep your appointment?"

"No. I arrived four hours earlier than my
appointment."

"I beg to congratulate you on that proceed-
ing! When did you take the Diamond to the
bank at the town here?"

"I took it an hour after I had brought it to
this house—and three hours before anybody
was prepared for seeing me in these parts."

"I beg to congratulate you again! Did you
bring it back here alone?"

"No. I happened to ride back with my
cousins and the groom."

"I beg to congratulate you for the third
time! If you ever feel inclined to travel be-
yond the civilised limits, Mr. Blake, let me
know, and I will go with you. You are a lucky
man."

Here I struck in. This sort of thing didn't
at all square with my English ideas.

"You don't really mean to say, sir," I asked,
"that they would have taken Mr. Franklin's
life, to get their Diamond, if he had given them
the chance?"

"Do you smoke, Mr. Betteredge?" says the
traveller.

"Yes, sir."

"Do you care much for the ashes left in your
pipe, when you empty it?"

"No, sir."

"In the country those men came from, they
care just as much about killing a man, as you
care about emptying the ashes out of your pipe.
If a thousand lives stood between them and the
getting back of their Diamond—and if they
thought they could destroy those lives without
discovery—they would take them all. The
sacrifice of caste is a serious thing in India, if
you like. The sacrifice of life is nothing at all."