y were
hauling the canoe up a rapid the craft narrowly escaped capsizing, and
spilled out a large tin that contained twenty-five pounds of corn meal
and ten pounds of rice--their entire stock. What was worse, the cover
came off, and the precious contents disappeared in the water.

About fifteen pounds of Graham flour and five pounds of oatmeal were
all the breadstuffs they had left now, and they had to use it most
sparingly.

But they were well within the region where Horace thought that the
diamond-beds must lie. On the map it had seemed a small area; but now
they realized that it was a huge stretch of tangled wilderness, where a
dozen diamond-beds might defy discovery. Even Horace, the veteran
prospector, admitted that they had a big job before them.

"However, we'll find the blue clay if it's on the surface--and the
supplies hold out," he said, with determination.

The next morning each of the boys went out in a different direction.
Late in the afternoon they came back, one by one, tired and fly-bitten,
and each with the same failure to report. The ground was much as they
had found it before, covered with rock and gravel in rolling ridges.
Nowhere had they found the blue clay.

They spent two more days here, working hard from morning to night, with
no success. The next day they again moved camp a day's journey
upstream; that brought them into the heart of the district from which
they had expected so much. The river was growing so narrow and so
broken that it would be almost impossible for them to follow it farther
by canoe. If they pushed on they would have to abandon their craft,
and carry what supplies they could on their backs.

But they intended to spend a week here. They set out on the diamond
hunt again with fresh energy. A warm, soft drizzle was falling, which
to some extent kept down the flies.

Horace came back to camp first; he had had no success. He was trying
to find dry wood to rekindle the fire when he saw Fred coming down the
bank at a run. The boy's face was aglow.

"Look here, Horace! What's this?" he asked, as he came up panting. In
his hand he held a large, wet lump of greenish-blue, clayey mud.
Horace took it, poked into it, and turned it over. Then he glanced
sympathetically at his brother's face.

"I'm afraid it isn't anything, old boy," he said. "Only ordinary mud.
The real blue clay is more of a gray blue, you know, and generally as
hard as bricks."

Fred pitched th