Mona also rose, and, bidding him a quiet good-day, went quickly out of the office, and hastened back to the hotel.
* * * * *
In order to understand more fully some of the incidents related, we shall have to go back a few days.
It was a bright, clear morning when a rather rough-looking, yet not unattractive person, entered a large jewelry establishment located on one of the principal streets of St. Louis.
He might have been thirty-five years of age, for there was a sprinkling of silver among his coarse, intensely black hair, which he wore quite long, and also in his huge mustache and beard. His face was bronzed from exposure; there were crow's feet about his eyes, and two deep wrinkles between his brows, and his general appearance indicated that he had seen a good deal of the rough side of life.
He wore a coarse though substantial suit of clothes, which hung rather loosely upon him; a gray flannel shirt with a turn-over collar, which was fastened at the throat by a flashy necktie, rather carelessly knotted; a red cotton handkerchief was just visible in one of his pockets; there were coarse, clumsy boots on his feet, and he wore a wide-brimmed, slouch hat.
He inquired of the clerk, who came forward to wait upon him, if he could see the "boss of the consarn," as he had a little private business to transact with him.
The clerk smiled slightly at his broad vernacular, as he replied that he would speak to the proprietor, and presently an elderly gentleman appeared from an inner office, and inquired the nature of the man's business.
"I'm a miner," he said. "I'm just home from Australia, where I've been huntin' diamonds for the last ten years. I've made a pretty good haul, and sold most of 'em in London on my way home. I had a few dandy ones cut there, though, to bring back to my gal; but—but—well, to tell the plain truth," he said, with some confusion, "she's gone back on me; she couldn't wait for me, so married another fellar; and now I want to sell the stones. D'ye want to buy?"
There was something rather attractive, as well as amusing, in the man's frankness, and the merchant smiled, as he kindly remarked that he would examine the stones.