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?"