"But the diamonds? They didn't weigh many ounces," interrupted Maurice.
"I struck for the Abitibi," went on Horace, paying no attention to the question, "and I was so weak that I couldn't make much speed. I had been out five days, and my grub was pretty nearly gone, when I stumbled into the lumbermen. They treated me like real Samaritans, took me in and fed me, and I've been there convalescing ever since. Day before yesterday I started back here to get my things. I had to travel slowly, for I'm not overstrong yet, and I was hurrying on to get to the cabin to-night when you pounced on me."
"If you had only taken the diamonds with you!" Fred lamented.
"I did," said Horace. He looked at the boys with a smile, and then went on:—
"Those stones, my boy, that you saw in the cabin aren't diamonds. They are quartz crystals and rather curious garnets, worth a few dollars at the most. Here are the diamonds!"
He took a small leather pouch from an inner pocket; the boys jumped up in excitement to look. From the pouch he took a small paper package, unfolded it, and revealed nine small lumps, which ranged in size from a small shot to a large pea. They looked like lumps of gum arabic, but their edges and angles reflected brilliant sparks in the firelight.
"Those little things? Are they diamonds?" cried Fred, in some disappointment.
"Little things? Why, if they were all perfect stones, they'd be worth a small fortune. Unfortunately, the biggest has a flaw in it that you can see even without cutting it, and some of the others are yellowish and off color. It will take an expert to say what they 're worth. But the great triumph is to have found diamonds up here at all."
"Yes, and there must be more where these came from," said Maurice, brightening. "If you've discovered the beds—"
"I haven't, though," Horace returned. "Three of these stones I bought from a camp of Ojibwas. The rest I found in the gravel of the creek-beds, mostly along the Nottaway River, but none of them within a quarter of a mile of another. Whenever I thought the gravel looked promising, I sifted some of it. But I didn't find a trace of the blue soil that always forms the diamond-beds; if there are diamond-beds up here, they must be somewhere beyond the region that we have explored."