What price is to be paid for diamonds? There are those who would pay dearly to possess them - sometimes too dearly. Such was the case with Peter Van Dusen, a Dutch farmer living with his English wife Martha and a seventeen year old Tom, on the banks of the Vaal river in Africa. Tom has a strong desire to go to England and study to be an artist, but his father has been distant over the past weeks and he and his mother are concerned about what has consumed his interest.