ous while he was shaved and his hair was trimmed.

"Mr. Percy is waiting in your sitting-room," said the negro, when
these operations were finished. "My name is Gygsum, Mr. Unger, sir. I
am to see to Mr. Unger every morning."

John walked out into the brisk sunshine of his living-room, where he
found breakfast waiting for him and Percy, gorgeous in white kid
knickerbockers, smoking in an easy chair.

IV

This is a story of the Washington family as Percy sketched it for John
during breakfast.

The father of the present Mr. Washington had been a Virginian, a
direct descendant of George Washington, and Lord Baltimore. At the
close of the Civil War he was a twenty-five-year-old Colonel with a
played-out plantation and about a thousand dollars in gold.

Fitz-Norman Culpepper Washington, for that was the young Colonel's
name, decided to present the Virginia estate to his younger brother
and go West. He selected two dozen of the most faithful blacks, who,
of course, worshipped him, and bought twenty-five tickets to the West,
where he intended to take out land in their names and start a sheep
and cattle ranch.

When he had been in Montana for less than a month and things were
going very poorly indeed, he stumbled on his great discovery. He had
lost his way when riding in the hills, and after a day without food he
began to grow hungry. As he was without his rifle, he was forced to
pursue a squirrel, and, in the course of the pursuit, he noticed that
it was carrying something shiny in its mouth. Just before it vanished
into its hole--for Providence did not intend that this squirrel should
alleviate his hunger--it dropped its burden. Sitting down to consider
the situation Fitz-Norman's eye was caught by a gleam in the grass
beside him. In ten seconds he had completely lost his appetite and
gained one hundred thousand dollars. The squirrel, which had refused
with annoying persistence to become food, had made him a present of a
large and perfect diamond.

Late that night he found his way to camp and twelve hours later all
the males among his darkies were back by the squirrel hole digging
furiously at the side of the mountain. He told them he had discovered
a rhinestone mine, and, as only one or two of them had ever seen even
a small diamond before, they believed him, without question. When the
magnitude of his discovery became apparent to him, he found himself in
a quandary. The mountain was _a_ diamond--it was literally