"There's no chance of making a pile in the country," said Amos Topper, who raised ten acres of "forage" regularly every season, and "rode" firewood for a living in the balance of the year. "'Tis all hard work and disappointment--ticks in the cattle and rust in the corn." "Soh!" said Abe Pike. "Well; so it is!" "Yet," said Abe, "there's chances." "Meanin' pine-apples and bananas, which Dick Purdy made a fortune out of through growing them on the slope of a valley." "No; meanin' diamonds." "There's no diamonds down here." "Is that so? Well, I seed one right here, as big as a plum an' as red as the eye of a coal gleamin' outer the dark. Yes, sir." "Of course. It belonged to some digger from the field. For the matter of that, I've seen a whole bucketful of them, but then they was white, and the sight of 'em never made me any the richer." "Your head was allus too big for your hat, Amos. I expect that's why there's a hole in the crown of it for your hair to grow through--but it so happens this yer diamon' I'm speakin' of could ha' been gathered by anyone who had the pluck to grab it." "Fire ahead, old man," I said, seeing that Abe was preparing the way for a yarn. "You've hit it, sonny," said Abe solemnly; "it was fire-ahead, and no mistake. Lemme see; you know ole Harkins, the mad trader?" "I remember him," said Mr Strong, "a fine hunter in his youth, who returned from his last trip into the interior broken by the Zambesi fever. He had a suspicion that everyone was watching him, and I believe he died in the bush after leading the life of a hermit." "That's him," said Abe, pulling at his pipe until the glow lit up his lined face. "Yes, he went into the bush--and for three years he hunted for that same red diamond. Some people thought he was crazy--so he were crazy after a fortune, but lor' bless yer, he'd got all his wits about him, and the fortune was big enough to buy up the whole side of this district--houses, land and stock--which is a big enough haul to turn the minds of most of us. One night, many years ago, I was still-huntin' buffel by the Kowie bush, when from the thick of the wood I yeard a noise that sent me up a tree in a jif--a shrill sort o' scream that I couldn't fix--an' whiles I was up the tree I seed ole Harkins slippin' along through the moon light. He stood under the tree listenin', and then he began talkin' to hisself in jerks. `That's him, I swear!' he said, `and by God I'll have him or die!'