More money could have been got for it, and the disposal of it in the diamond market would have been infinitely easier, if it had passed through the hands of the workmen of Amsterdam." "Lord bless us, sir!" I burst out.

"What was the plot, then ?" "A plot organised among the Indians who originally owned the jewel," says Mr.Franklin--"a plot with some old Hindoo superstition at the bottom of it.

That is my opinion, confirmed by a family paper which I have about me at this moment." I saw, now, why the appearance of the three Indian jugglers at our house had presented itself to Mr.Franklin in the light of a circumstance worth noting.
"I don't want to force my opinion on you," Mr.Franklin went on.

"The idea of certain chosen servants of an old Hindoo superstition devoting themselves, through all difficulties and dangers, to watching the opportunity of recovering their sacred gem, appears to me to be perfectly consistent with everything that we know of the patience of Oriental races, and the influence of Oriental religions.

But then I am an imaginative man; and the butcher, the baker, and the tax-gatherer, are not the only credible realities in existence to my mind.