in the strangest manner, from speaking of it,
even to me. It is impossible you can see her
for the present."

Having added to our perplexities by this
account of Miss Rachel, my lady, after a little
effort, recovered her usual composure, and acted
with her usual decision.

"I suppose there is no help for it?" she said,
quietly. "I suppose I have no alternative
but to send for the police?"

"And the first thing for the police to do,"
added Mr. Franklin, catching her up, "is to
lay hands on the Indian jugglers who performed
here last night."

My lady and Mr. Godfrey (not knowing what
Mr. Franklin and I knew) both started, and
both looked surprised.

"I can't stop to explain myself, now," Mr.
Franklin went on. "I can only tell you that
the Indians have certainly stolen the Diamond.
Give me a letter of introduction," says he,
addressing my lady, "to one of the magistrates at
Frizinghall—merely telling him that I represent
your interests and wishes, and let me ride off
with it instantly. Our chance of catching
the thieves may depend on our not wasting one
unnecessary minute." (Nota bene: Whether
it was the French side or the English, the right
side of Mr, Franklin seemed to be uppermost
now. The only question was, How long
would it last?)

He put pen, ink, and paper before his aunt,
who (as it appeared to me) wrote the letter
he wanted, a little unwillingly. If it had been
possible to overlook such an event as the loss
of a jewel worth twenty thousand pounds, I
believe—with my lady's opinion of her late
brother, and her distrust of his birthday-gift—
it would have been privately a relief to her to
let the thieves get off with the Moonstone scot
free.

I went out with Mr. Franklin to the stables,
and took the opportunity of asking him how
the Indians (whom I suspected, of course, as
shrewdly as he did) could possibly have got
into the house.

"One of them might have slipped into the
hall, in the confusion, when the dinner-
company were going away," says Mr. Franklin.
"The fellow may have been under the sofa
while my aunt and Rachel were talking about
where the Diamond was to be put for the night.
He would only have to wait till the house was
quiet, and there it would be in the cabinet,
to be had for the taking." With those words,
he called to the groom to open the gate, and
galloped off.

This seemed certainly to be the only rational
explanation. But how had the thief contrived to
make his escape from the house? I had found the
front door locked and bolted, as I had left it at
night, when I went to open it, after getting
up. As for the other doors and windows, there
they were still, all safe and fast, to speak for
themselves. The dogs, too? Suppose the thief
had got away by dropping from one of the upper
windows, how had he escaped the dogs? Had he
come provided for them with drugged meat?
As the doubt crossed my mind, the dogs
themselves came galloping at me round a corner,
rolling each other over on the wet grass, in such
lively health and spirits that it was with no
small difficulty I brought them to reason, and
chained them up again. The more I turned
it over in my mind, the less satisfactory Mr.
Franklin's explanation appeared to be.

We had our breakfasts—whatever happens in
a house, robbery or murder, it doesn't matter,
you must have your breakfast. When we had
done, my lady sent for me; and I found myself
compelled to tell her all that I had hitherto
concealed, relating to the Indians and their
plot. Being a woman of a high courage, she
soon got over the first startling effect of what I
had to communicate. Her mind seemed to be
far more perturbed about her daughter than
about the heathen rogues and their conspiracy.
"You know how odd Rachel is, and how differently
she behaves sometimes from other girls,"
my lady said to me. "But I have never, in all
my experience, seen her so strange and so
reserved as she is now. The loss of her jewel
seems almost to have turned her brain. Who
would have thought that horrible Diamond could
have laid such a hold on her in so short a
time?"

It was certainly strange. Taking toys and
trinkets in general, Miss Rachel was nothing
like so mad after them as most young girls.
Yet there she was, still locked up inconsolably in
her bed-room. It is but fair to add that she was
not the only one of us in the house who was
thrown out of the regular groove. Mr. Godfrey,
for instance—though professionally a sort of
consoler-general—seemed to be at a loss where
to look for his own resources. Having no
company to amuse him, and getting no chance
of trying what his experience of women in
distress could do towards comforting Miss
Rachel, he wandered hither and thither about
the house and garden in an aimless uneasy
way. He was in two different minds about
what it became him to do, after the misfortune
that had happened to us. Ought he to relieve
the family, in their present situation, of the
responsibility of him as a guest? or ought he
to stay on the chance that even his humble
services might be of some use? He decided
ultimately that the last course was perhaps the
most customary and considerate course to take,
in such a very peculiar case of family distress as
this was. Circumstances try the metal a man
is really made of. Mr. Godfrey, tried by
circumstances,showed himself of weaker metal than
I had thought him to be. As for the women-
servants—excepting Rosanna Spearman, who kept
by herself—they took to whispering together
in corners, and staring at nothing suspiciously,
as is the manner of that weaker half of the human
family, when anything extraordinary happens in
a house. I myself acknowledge to having
been fidgety and ill-tempered. The cursed
Moonstone had turned us all upside down.

A little before eleven, Mr. Franklin came