confidence
by conforming, (or seeming to conform), to the Mussulman faith, have
become three Officers of Tippoo's household, still maintaining in
secret their jealous watch over the Moonstone. Thus the romance opens,
and its highly interesting, most fascinating, and marvellous incidents,
continue their course of action; until finally, having been
rescued,—even from England, whither it has travelled as an ill-omened,
malignant captive, in a marvellous manner,—Eastern magnetism assisting
as an occult means,—the Moonstone reappears under the custody of three
strange Hindoos, at a great religious ceremony in honour of the God of
the Moon. This superstitious function is being held before thousands of
thronging fanatical spectators, at night, on a hill, close to the
sacred city of Somnauh, in the wild region of Kattiawar, in the
north-west of India. At the weird, awesome ceremony, suddenly there
appear three figures on the platform of a rock. They are the Brahmins,
who have forfeited their caste in the service of their god. On that
night the three men were to part company so as to receive their
purification by pilgrimage at the command of the god. Never more were
they to look on each other's faces.
Then
the curtain between the trees was drawn aside, and the shrine was
disclosed to view. " There, raised high on a throne, seated on his
typical antelope, with his four arms stretching towards the four
corners of the earth, there soared above all, dark, and awful in the
mystic light of heaven, the God of the Moon. And there in the forehead
of the deity, gleamed the ' Yellow Diamond;' whose splendour had shone
last on its English possessor from the bosom of a woman's dress ! Yes !
after the lapse of eight centuries the Moonstone
