"Ah, that's what nobody knows. The Indian said that the remaining half-breed was falling sick when he left. The white man may be dead by this time, or perhaps still living but deserted, or he may be well on the road to recovery. But I left out the sensational feature of the whole thing. My Indian said that the white man had a buckskin sack on him full of little stones that shone like fire. He seemed to set great store by them, and threatened to blow the head off anybody who touched the bag."
"Shining stones? Perhaps they were diamonds!" ejaculated Fred.
"It looks almost as if he might have found the diamond fields, for a fact," said Peter, with sparkling eyes.
Canada was full of rumors of diamond discoveries just then. Every Canadian must remember the intense excitement created by the report that diamonds had been found in the mining regions of northern Ontario. Several stones had actually been brought down to Toronto and Montreal, where tests showed them to be real diamonds, though they were mostly small, flawed, and valueless. One, however, was said to have brought nine hundred dollars, and the news set many parties outfitting to prospect for the blue-clay beds. But they met with no success. In every case the stones had either been picked up in river drift or obtained from Indians who could give no definite account of where they had been found.
Could it be that this strange white man had actually stumbled on the diamond fields—only to fall sick and perhaps to die with the secret of his discoveries untold? Fred gazed from Peter to Maurice, almost speechless.
"Naturally, my first idea was to get up a rescue party to bring out the sick prospector," Maurice went on. "But the woods are in the worst kind of shape for traveling. The streams are all frozen hard, but there has been remarkably little snow yet—not near enough for snowshoes or sledges. It would be impossible to tramp that distance and pack the supplies. Besides, when I came to think it over it struck me that the thing was too valuable to share with a lot of guides and backwoodsmen. If we find that fellow alive, and he has really discovered anything, it would be strange if he wouldn't give us a chance to stake out a few claims that might be worth thousands—maybe millions. And it struck me that there was a quicker way to get to him than by snowshoes or dogs. The streams are frozen, the ice is clear, and the skating was fine at Muirhead."
"An expedition on skates?" cried Fred.
"Why not? There's a clear canoe way, barring a few portages, and that means a clear ice road till it snows. But it might do that at any moment."
"A hundred and fifty miles in two days?" said Fred. "Sure, we can do it. I'll set the pace, if you fellows can keep up."
"Anyhow, I came straight down to the city and saw Maurice about it. He said you'd be the best third man we could get. But I had hoped we could get Horace, so as to have his expert opinion on what that man may have found."