336                          PRECIOUS STONES.
	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