The Moonstone

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 return 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: "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 confidence; you will oblige me, I am sure, by not

forgetting that?"

With this preface, he told the Indian traveller 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."