ody of water some ten feet wide by three or four inches
deep, it was swollen--at regular intervals of twenty minutes each,
corresponding with the periodical discharge of the geyser--into a
rushing and foaming torrent of about ten feet wide and four feet deep,
lasting thus for about a minute, when the stream again rapidly subsided
to its previous depth.

For a distance of about two miles the stream wound its way over a bed of
exposed rock, beyond which occurred a considerable stretch of coarse
gravelly soil, thickly overgrown with long grass. The constant flow of
water for untold ages through this bed of gravel had scoured out a
channel nearly forty feet wide by half that depth; the banks being
perfectly vertical, except in a few places where the gravel had crumbled
away to a rather steep slope.

It was whilst the wanderers were passing one of these places that--the
sun being by this time in the western quarter of the heavens, and his
level rays falling directly upon the right bank of the stream--the
baronet's attention was arrested by the appearance of several bright
sparkling gleams emanating from among the _debris_ of the crumbling
bank. He directed the colonel's attention to these, whereupon the
latter, seized with sudden excitement, scrambled down the bank, waded
across the shallow stream, and in another instant flung himself down
upon his knees on the gravel. Before the astonished baronet could
follow him he leaped to his feet again, and, whilst he waved some
glittering object above his head, shouted:

"Hurrah! hurrah! Elphinstone, my dear fellow, we are in luck to-day.
Here is a fabulous fortune for every one of us, to be had merely for the
trouble of picking up. _This is a bed of diamondiferous gravel_."

Sir Reginald hastened across the stream, and, scrambling half-way up the
bank, joined his companion on the spot where the latter had halted.

"Look here!" exclaimed Lethbridge, holding out for inspection a crystal
as large as a pigeon's egg; "what think you of that for a first find?
And it is of the first water, too."

The baronet took it in his hand and examined it critically. Then he
handed it back with the remark:

"Well, my dear fellow, I am no judge of diamonds, at least in their
natural uncut state; but if your supposition--that you have discovered a
`bed' or `pocket,' or whatever you call it, of diamonds--be correct, I
most heartily congratulate you."

"You--congratulate--_me_?" gasped the