It came as a surprise to his superiors that one day's chance discovery showed De Lancy Scovel to be worth fifty thousand pounds; and from that time on they used him for many a purpose in which it was expedient their own hands should not appear.

They felt confident that a man who could so carefully and secretly build up his own fortune had a gift which could be used to advantage.

A man who could be so subterranean in his own affairs would no doubt be equally secluded in their business.

Selfishness would make him silent.

And so it was that "the dude" of the camp and the kraal, the factotum, who in his time had brushed Rhodes' clothes when he brushed his own, after the Kaffir servant had messed them about, came to be a millionaire and one of the Partners.