the view that met me, when I looked forth
from the summit of the hill.

A strain of plaintive music, played on
stringed instruments and flutes, recalled my
attention to the hidden shrine.

I turned, and saw on the rocky platform, the
figures of three men. In the central figure of
the three, I recognised the man to whom I had
spoken in England, when the Indians appeared
on the terrace at Lady Verinder's house. The
other two, who had been his companions on
that occasion, were no doubt his companions
also on this.

One of the Hindoos, near whom I was standing,
saw me start. In a whisper, he explained
to me the apparition of the three figures on the
platform of rock.

They were Brahmins (he said) who had
forfeited their caste, in the service of the god.
The god had commanded that their purification
should be the purification by pilgrimage. On
that night, the three men were to part. In
three separate directions, they were to set forth
as pilgrims to the shrines of India. Never
more were they to look on each other's faces.
Never more were they to rest on their wanderings,
from the day which witnessed their
separation, to the day which witnessed their
death.

As those words were whispered to me, the
plaintive music ceased. The three men
prostrated themselves on the rock, before the
curtain which hid the shrine. They rose—they
looked on one another—they embraced. Then
they descended separately among the people.
The people made way for them in dead silence.
In three different directions, I saw the crowd
part, at one and the same moment. Slowly, the
grand white mass of the people closed together
again. The track of the doomed men through
the ranks of their fellow mortals was obliterated.
We saw them no more.

A new strain of music, loud and jubilant,
rose from the hidden shrine. The crowd around
me shuddered and pressed together.

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 us, 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 last
shone on me, in England, from the bosom of a
woman's dress!

Yes! after the lapse of eight centuries, the
Moonstone looks forth once more over the
walls of the sacred city in which its story first
began. How it has found its way back to its
wild native land—by what accident, or by what
crime, the Indians regained possession of their
sacred gem, may be in your knowledge, but is
not in mine. You have lost sight of it in
England, and (if I know anything of this people)
you have lost sight of it for ever.

So the years pass, and repeat each other; so
the same events revolve in the cycles of Time.
What will be the next adventures of The
Moonstone? Who can tell!

THE END.

CARNIVAL TIME IN BRITANY.

AT daybreak one crisp February morning, we
entered the quaint old city of Nantes, escorted
by a 'motley caravan of peasants, who were
wending their way with their various stock to
the market square on the quays. After we
had passed the seven ancient bridges which
conduct from the southern bank of the Loire,
over as many islands, to the northern bank,
whereon the old Breton capital mainly lies;
after we had taken a glimpse at the stunted-
looking cathedral, which rears its square towers
above the city, and had for an instant stopped
to gaze at the old ducal castle, standing in an
enormous ditch, half below the level of the street;
—we reached at length the square on the crest
of the hill upon which Nantes is built, where
stands, inviting to a rather gloomy hospitality,
the Hôtel de France.

Here took place a brief but lively struggle
between hunger and weariness; but the garçon
having conducted us to one of those almost
oppressively comfortable rooms which you find
sometimes in provincial France, and having,
moreover, imparted to us the fact that breakfast
would be served at eleven, and not an
instant before, Tompkins abruptly declared for
sleep by dropping heavily upon the bed—
boots, coat, and all—and sounding a nasal
trumpet in honour of tired nature's triumph.
I have to thank my companion's snoring for
the confused and martial dreams which
followed me. Once I thought that the bugle
blasts of the Black Prince were sounding in
my ear, summoning me to the attack on the
old Breton Castle; but I was held back by a
crowd of screaming bonnes, with their long
lace caps, who raised, with their shrill voices, a
perfect pandemonium about my ears. In the
midst of all this hubbub I awoke, rubbed my
eyes, and turned over. More regularly than
the ticks of the fantastic clock on the mantel,
sounded still the snores of Tompkins; but an
instant after I, lying there wide awake, heard
the same screeching of bugles and yelling of
bonnes, which I had thought a horrid dream.

I aroused Tompkins.

"Perhaps," said he, a trifle pale,—"perhaps
it is a revolution!"

This gave a practical turn to the matter, and
it luckily happened, that the garçon just then
summoned us to breakfast.

"But what is all this hubbub?" asked I, in
the choicest of "conversation-book" French.

"In the square, monsieur?" said the stolid
Breton, as if nothing unusual were going on.

"Of course."

"To-morrow is the Mercredi des Cendres,
monsieur," in a tone which expressed, "You're
a noodle not to know it."