mp over the rough country, but reached their
destination rather sooner than they expected. The river, shrunk to a
rapid creek, ended in a tiny lake between two hills.

The general surface of the country was the same as that which had
already grown so monotonously familiar, except that there was rather
more outcrop of bedrock. Nowhere could they see anything that seemed
to suggest the presence of blue clay, and although they spent the whole
of the next twenty-four hours in making wide circles round the lake,
they found nothing.

The following morning they started back, depressed and miserable. If
Horace's trip should also prove fruitless, the chances of their finding
the diamonds would be slim indeed. The Smoke River made a wide turn to
the west and north, and they concluded that a straight line by compass
across the wilderness would save them several miles of travel, and
would also give them a chance to see some fresh ground. They left the
river, therefore, and struck a bee-line to the southeast. The new
ground proved as unprofitable as the old, and somewhat rougher. The
journey had been hard on shoe leather; Fred was limping badly.

Late in the afternoon the boys stopped to rest on the top of a bare,
rocky ridge, where the black flies were not so bad as in the valleys.
They guessed that they were about four or five miles from camp. The
sun shone level and warm from the west, and the boys sat in silence,
tired and discouraged.

"I'm afraid we're not going to make a million this trip, Mac," said
Fred, at last.

"No," Peter replied soberly. "Unless Horace has struck something."

"It's too big a country to look over inch by inch. If there really are
any diamond-beds--"

"Oh, there must be some. Horace found scattered stones last summer,
you know. But of course the beds may be far underground. In South
Africa they often have to sink deep shafts to strike them."

Fred did not answer at once. He had taken out the field-glass that he
carried, and was turning it aimlessly this way and that, when Mac spoke
suddenly:--

"What's that moving in the ravine--see! About a hundred yards up,
below the big cedar on the rock."

"Ground hog, likely," said Fred, turning the glass toward the rocky
gorge, through which ran a little stream that lay at the base of the
ridge. "I don't see anything. Oh--yes, now I've got 'em.
One--two--three--four little animals. Why, they're playing together
like kittens! They loo