open force, the three guardian priests followed
and watched it in disguise. The generations
succeeded each other; the warrior who had
committed the sacrilege perished miserably; the
Moonstone passed (carrying its curse with it)
from one lawless Mohammedan hand to another;
and still, through all chances and changes, the
successors of the three guardian priests kept
their watch, waiting the day when the will of
Vishnu the Preserver should restore to them
their sacred gem. Time rolled on from the
first to the last years of the eighteenth
Christian century. The Diamond fell into the
possession of Tippoo, Sultan of Seringapatam,
who caused it to be placed as an ornament
in the handle of a dagger, and who
commanded it to be kept among the choicest
treasures of his armoury. Even then—in the
palace of the Sultan himself—the three guardian
priests still kept their watch, in secret. There
were three officers of Tippoo's household,
strangers to the rest, who had won their master's
confidence by conforming, or appearing to
conform, to the Mussulman faith; and to those
three men report pointed, as the three priests
in disguise.

                                III

So, as told in our camp, ran the fanciful story of
the Moonstone. It made no serious impression on
any of us except my cousin—whose love of the
marvellous induced him to believe it. On the
night before the assault on Seringapatam, he was
absurdly angry with me, and with others, for
treating the whole thing as a fable. A foolish
wrangle followed; and Herncastle's unlucky
temper got the better of him. He declared, in
his boastful way, that we should see the Diamond
on his finger, if the English army took Seringapatam.
The sally was saluted by a roar of
laughter, and there, as we all thought that
night, the thing ended.

Let me now take you on to the day of the
assault.

My cousin and I were separated at the
outset. I never saw him when we forded the
river; when we planted the English flag in the
first breach; when we crossed the ditch beyond;
and, fighting every inch of our way, entered the
town. It was only at dusk, when the place was
ours, and after General Baird himself had found
the dead body of Tippoo under a heap of the
slain, that Herncastle and I met.

We were each attached to a party sent out
by the general's orders to prevent the plunder
and confusion which followed our conquest.
The camp-followers committed deplorable
excesses; and, worse still, the soldiers found their
way, by an unguarded door, into the treasury
of the palace, and loaded themselves with gold
and jewels. It was in the court outside the
treasury that my cousin and I met, to enforce
the laws of discipline on our own soldiers.
Herncastle's fiery temper had been, as I could
plainly see, exasperated to a kind of frenzy by
the terrible slaughter through which we had
passed. He was very unfit, in my opinion, to
perform the duty that had been entrusted to
him.

There was riot and confusion enough in the
treasury, but no violence that I saw. The men
(if I may use such an expression) disgraced
themselves good humouredly. All sorts of
rough jests and catchwords were bandied about
among them; and the story of the Diamond
turned up again unexpectedly, in the form of a
mischievous joke. "Who's got the Moonstone?"
was the rallying cry which perpetually caused
the plundering, as soon as it was stopped in one
place, to break out in another. While. I was
still vainly trying to establish order, I heard a
frightful yelling on the other side of the court-
yard, and at once ran towards the cries, in dread
of finding some new outbreak of the pillage in
that direction.

I got to an open door, and saw the bodies of
two Indians (by their dress, as I guessed,
officers of the palace) lying across the entrance,
dead.

A cry inside hurried me into a room, which
appeared to serve as an armoury. A third Indian,
mortally wounded, was sinking at the feet of a
man whose back was towards me. The man
turned at the instant when I came in, and I saw
John Herncastle, with a torch in one hand, and
a dagger dripping with blood in the other. A
stone, set like a pommel, in the end of the
dagger's handle, flashed in the torchlight, as he
turned on me, like a gleam of fire. The dying
Indian sank to his knees, pointed to the dagger
in Herncastle's hand, and said, in his native
language:—"The Moonstone will have its
vengeance yet on you and yours!" He spoke
those words, and fell dead on the floor.

Before I could stir in the matter, the men
who had followed me across the court-yard
crowded in. My cousin rushed to meet them,
like a madman. "Clear the room!" he shouted
to me, "and set a guard on the door!" The
men fell back as he threw himself on them with
his torch and his dagger. I put two sentinels of
my own company, on whom I could rely, to
keep the door. Through the remainder of the
night, I saw no more of my cousin.

Early in the morning, the plunder still going
on, General Baird announced publicly by beat
of drum, that any thief detected in the fact, be
he whom he might, should be hung. The
provost-marshal was in attendance, to prove that
the general was in earnest; and in the throng
that followed the proclamation, Herncastle and
I met again.

He held out his hand, as usual, and said,
"Good morning."

I waited before I gave him my hand in
return.

"Tell me first," I said, "how the Indian in
the armoury met his death, and what those
last words meant, when he pointed to the
dagger in your hand."

"The Indian met his death, as I suppose,
by a mortal wound," said Herncastle. "What
his last words meant I know no more than
you do."

I looked at him narrowly. His frenzy of
the previous day had all calmed down. I
determined to give him another chance.