“You might have thought that all those months when he and I were alone in the forest, I should have learnt the truth,” he said. “Yet from the moment he found me lying where that precious pair of scoundrels left me to the night you discovered us both, he told me nothing.” Amber waited until Peter had bustled away importantly--he took very kindly to the office of nurse--and the three were left together. “When did you first realize the fact that he had discovered the River of Stars?” Frank Sutton filled his pipe slowly. “I don’t know when I realized it,” he said. “The first recollection I have is of somebody bending over me and giving me a drink. I think that he must have given me food too. I was awfully weak at the time. When I got better I used to lie and watch him scratching about in the bed of the river.” “He was quite rational?” “Quite, though it used to worry me a bit, when he would bring me a couple of pebbles and beg of me to take great care of them. To humour him I kept them; I used to make a great show of tying them up in my pocket handkerchief, never realizing for a moment that they were diamonds.” “And all this time, Frank, you knew it was father?” It was the girl who spoke, and Frank nodded again. “I don’t know how I knew, but I knew,” he said simply. “I was only a child when he went out, and he has changed from the man I remembered. I tried to persuade him to trek to the coast, but he would not move, and there was nothing to do but to stay and chance getting hold of a native to send to the coast with a message. But the natives regarded the place as haunted, and none came near, not even the hunting regiments. And the curious thing was,” he said thoughtfully, “that I did not believe the stones were anything but pebbles.” He got up from the deep chair in which he was sitting. “I’m going to leave you people for a while--you’ll find me in the library.” “I’ll go with you for a moment, if you will excuse me,” said Amber, and the girl smiled her assent. When the library door had closed behind them: “Sutton,” said Amber, “I want you to be jolly careful about that prospectus--you got my wire?” “Yes, you wired me not to send the copy to the printers. Why?” “It contains too much information that would be valuable to Lambaire,” said the other. “It contains the very information, in fact, that he would give his head to obtain.” “I never thought of that,” said Sutton; “but how could he get it from a little country printer’s?” “I don’t think he could get it, but Whitey would. To-morrow or to-day the Colonial Office asks Lambaire to locate his mine--we want to make sure that he does not secure his information from us.” “I take you,” said the young man with a cheery nod. “I’m making a copy of the map you prepared, and to-morrow we’ll send it to the Colonial Office.” Amber returned to the girl. She was sitting in the corner of the settee which was drawn up at right angles to the fireplace.