"It's more than enough to cover the expenses of your trip into the woods this winter, and our next trip in the spring, too," said Horace, "for of course this eight hundred is going to be divided equally between us."
"Not a bit of it!" protested Mac. "You found the stones. They're yours. We won't take a cent of it, will we, Maurice?"
"I should think not!" Maurice exclaimed.
Horace tried to insist, but the two boys stood firm. At last he persuaded them to agree that the expenses of the expedition should be defrayed out of the diamond money. As for their coming trip next season, the matter was left to be settled later.
There was plenty of time to think of it, for it would be months before the woods would be open for prospecting.
CHAPTER IX
Nearly the whole winter was before them, but it was none too long a time to consider their plans. Horace had found diamonds, it is true, but they had been found miles apart, one at a time, in the river gravel. This is not the natural home of diamonds, which are always found native to the peculiar formation known in South Africa as "blue clay." Nobody had ever found a trace of blue clay in Ontario, yet Horace felt certain that the blue-clay beds must exist. They were the only thing worth looking for. To poke over the river gravel in hopes of finding a chance stone would be sheer waste of time. Hundreds of men had done it without lighting on a single diamond.
Horace was a trained geologist, and that winter he spent much time in study, without saying a word even to Fred as to what he was meditating. He pored over geological surveys, and went to Ottawa to consult the departmental maps at the Legislative Library. By slow degrees he was working out a theory, and at last, one February evening, he came into his brother's room.
"Just look at this, Fred, and see what you think of it," he remarked casually.