“Well, this is odd.  You’re one of those sort they call eccentrics, I judge.  The saying is, you mustn’t judge a man by his clothes, and I’m believing it now.  Why yours are looking just ratty, don’t you know; and yet you must be rich.”

“I am.”

The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went.  He halted a moment in front of the best restaurant, then glanced at his clothes and passed on, and got his breakfast at a “stand-up.”  There was a good deal of it, and it cost five shillings.  He tendered a sovereign, got his change, glanced at his silver, muttered to himself, “There isn’t enough to buy clothes with,” and went his way.

At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sitting in his morning-room at home, settling his breakfast with the morning paper.  A servant put his head in and said: 

“There’s a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir.”

“What do you bring that kind of a message here for?  Send him about his business.”

“He won’t go, sir.  I’ve tried.”

“He won’t go?  That’s—­why, that’s unusual.  He’s one of two things, then:  he’s a remarkable person, or he’s crazy.  Is he crazy?”

“No, sir.  He don’t look it.”

“Then he’s remarkable.  What does he say he wants?”

“He won’t tell, sir; only says it’s very important.”

“And won’t go.  Does he say he won’t go?”

“Says he’ll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it’s all day.”

“And yet isn’t crazy.  Show him up.”

The sundowner was shown in.  The broker said to himself, “No, he’s not crazy; that is easy to see; so he must be the other thing.”

Then aloud, “Well, my good fellow, be quick about it; don’t waste any words; what is it you want?”

“I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds.”

“Scott! (It’s a mistake; he is crazy . . . .  No—­he can’t be—­not with that eye.) Why, you take my breath away.  Come, who are you?”

“Nobody that you know.”

“What is your name?”

“Cecil Rhodes.”

“No, I don’t remember hearing the name before.  Now then—­just for curiosity’s sake—­what has sent you to me on this extraordinary errand?”

“The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for myself within the next sixty days.”

“Well, well, well.  It is the most extraordinary idea that—­sit down—­you interest me.  And somehow you—­well, you fascinate me; I think that that is about the word.  And it isn’t your proposition—­no, that doesn’t fascinate me; it’s something else, I don’t quite know what; something that’s born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose.  Now then just for curiosity’s sake again, nothing more:  as I understand it, it is your desire to bor——­”

“I said intention.”

“Pardon, so you did.  I thought it was an unheedful use of the word—­an unheedful valuing of its strength, you know.”