Charlie stood for a second or two watching his friend ride away.
“A happy New Year! Well, I shall have it if money can make one happy. That streak of luck you talk about has come in my way after all. I shall be able to clear out of the country as soon as I like. Honest men! Well, it don’t do to be too honest,” he said to himself.
Then he wondered what his old partner Jack Heathcote would have said if he had heard about the big diamond. Of course he would have said that he was right to stick to it, and would have been a fool if he had thrown away such a chance. He didn’t feel quite certain about it though. Jack was rather a queer fellow in his way, and though he did not go in for preaching, had some very decided notions about right and wrong. He had half a mind to tell his old friend, with whom he had lived as a partner for years, and from whom he had hardly had a secret since he had known him, of this good luck and ask him to share in it, but on second thoughts he knew that he had better not do that.
Jack Heathcote had reined in his horse, some hundred yards from the canteen, to light his pipe, and Charlie for a second or two watched him, unable to make up his mind.
“No, by Jove, I won’t ask him to have a share, and I won’t ask him what he’d do if he were in my place. I know. Hi, Jack Heathcote, Jack. Stop I say,” he shouted at the top of his voice, as he ran up to his friend, waving his hat.
Jack saw him and waited for him to come up.
“Well, what’s the matter?” he asked wondering, as he noticed a strangely excited look in his friend’s face.
“There is something else you ought to have, Jack; it is this,” Charlie said, and he took the big diamond from his pocket. “It’s over three hundred carats, I should say, and about the best stone in the world. Old David must have found it yesterday, for he had it on him when I pulled him out of the river. Take it to the camp and give it up, and let me be rid of it, for it’s safe with you; and, Jack, don’t think too badly of me because I have so nearly been a thief.”
“Charlie, there’s about ninety-nine men in a hundred who would think you a fool,” Jack said as he took the diamond, and then gave his old friend’s hand a grip. “I wonder who this thing belongs to now?”
“Don’t know, don’t care; not to me, anyhow; it’s a niceish stone, ain’t it?” he answered, and then the two friends parted, the one to startle the Diamond Fields by the tale of old David Miller’s luck, and, as a good many men thought, of Charlie Lumsden’s egregious folly, and the other to work with very ordinary luck as a digger at Moonlight Rush.