When she had wept for joy, she opened the envelope and shaking out the three loose stones dropped them into Johnny's hand.
"What's that?" he asked.
"A little reward. A present."
Taking the smallest of the three between finger and thumb he gave her back the others.
"One is enough," he told her. "I'll give it to Mazie."
"Ah, yes, to Mazie, your so beautiful, so wonderful friend," she murmured. Then, after a moment, "As for me, I go back to my own people. I shall spend my life and my fortune helping those very much to be pitied ones who have lost all in that so terrible Russia."
As Johnny left that room, he thought he was going to have that diamond set in a ring and present it to Mazie the very next day. But he was not. That interview with one of Chicago's leading bankers at five o'clock was destined to change the course of his whole life; for though the Big Five had never decided to act in unison with Hanada in his wild dream of a Kamchatkan Republic—the plan which had brought his arrest as a conspirator—they did propose to work those Kamchatkan gold mines on an old concession, given them by the former Czar, and they did propose that Johnny take charge of the expedition.