TREASURES THREE

ILLUSTRATED BY A.J. GOUGH

Published in The Strand Magazine, Jan 1908, pp 86-95

The Windsor Magazine, Jun 1912

TOM MACEY glanced across the room at his wife from under his thick eyebrows as if he were ashamed of something. He was not usually given to the things that men regret, and just at that moment his thoughts were none the less bitter because he really had done nothing to be ashamed of. And now he was actually hesitating at the very time when he ought not to have given the matter a single thought. He would have condemned this hesitation in any other man, and yet, and yet, and yet—

First of all, there was the child to be thought of. She was the only one—a little girl of some four years of age, and the apple of Tom Macey's eye. She ought to have been strong and healthy enough, seeing that both Macey and his wife were made of the stern stuff which has laid the foundation of the British Empire. They were willing and ready enough to share privations together, and they had done so more than once before now. But somehow the child was different. Most of the youngsters thrive in the keen, dry air there beneath the snows of the Colorado Rockies, but somehow or another it was not the same with little Vera. And the only doctor for a hundred miles around had told Macey that if his daughter was not taken away to a milder climate she would die.

It was easy enough to say this, but how was the matter to be brought about? Macey had been mining away up there in One Tree Gulch for the last two years with the most execrable luck. He had all the sanguine temperament which goes to the gold prospector. He was holding on desperately with a feeling that his turn would come at last. The man was not without imagination; he was more impressed by local traditions and Indian legends than he would have cared to admit. He had studied these until he knew them by heart. There were stories to the effect that here and there, on rare occasions in the past, diamonds had been found in some of the canyons away under the spurs of those everlasting hills. Certainly Macey had found here and there a deposit of blue earth which suggested the presence of the most rare of all precious stones. And then his luck had changed, and he found them.

And they were only three, but they were diamonds right enough; Macey knew that, for back in the years of his youth he had spent some time in the Transvaal, and he knew a diamond when he saw it. He found no more; he had not expected any farther dazzling luck like this; but he was well satisfied, for here, if he sold his stones to the best advantage, was a matter of twenty thousand pounds. It was not a large fortune, but, at any rate, it was big enough to ensure luxury and comfort in the future—big enough to enable Macey and his wife to get away farther South and save the life of the child. All these thing