“Yes. You see the moss agate has a tree veined through it, Mr. Gilbert pointed it all out to me,” admitted Mrs. Corday. “You only have to lay this down just as it would hang on your neck. Then, see this line? That’s the left limb; you just follow that limb straight and you will find, as we did, it points to a certain big hickory tree. Under that tree the box was buried——”
“But how could you dig in this frozen weather?” demanded incredulous Jack.
“Where there’s a will you can always find out how,” replied Mrs. Corday. “We simply built a little fire on the spot and the ground seemed glad of the heat, for it turned over quite agreeably, and we didn’t have to dig down very deep either. And now, Jacky, who says I’m crazy!” she demanded, fairly exhaling her prideful exultation.
“No one but ‘money grabbers’ ever did,” declared Jack. “They simply wanted the commission on handing out my prize packages,” she smiled, putting an arm affectionately through the golden brown elbow. “But tell the girls all of it. You haven’t said what you dug up.”
“That’s the way I go. Always so easily excited. Well, you see, my dear,” she turned to Gloria, “the hidden gem is a rare one, indeed. It was in a sealed box, just as dear Philip said, and it is called a Golconda diamond from the place in India where it was discovered. The cuttings-it has forty-eight small facets all pointed together in the one great diamond!” Her description was a queer mixture of the technical and the possible, but there was no mistaking her claims for a most wonderful diamond, unearthed from the roots of the protecting “hickory” and traced through the almost invisible “left limb” of the moss agate with “the base of moss at the north.” The woman was too agitated to continue at once. Trixy filled the gap.
“What ever will you do with it, Jack?” she asked.
“Give it to a museum,” promptly replied Jack. “It has already given me enough trouble, and I wouldn’t fancy it as a keepsake even for all it means—to me,” she uttered the last clause reverently.
“You see,” again spoke friend Steppy, “the old Turk or whatever he was, followed that diamond until Philip just had to bury it because we were so far out in the mountains and he couldn’t get it to safekeeping quickly enough——”
“I guess poor dad felt his illness was becoming serious,” broke in Jack gently.
“Indeed he did, my dear. No one knows that as well as I do. And he was so anxious about that stone! No wonder I acted like a crazy woman trying to find it,” she sighed.