A couple of hours later, lieutenant von Rambow was standing amongst the wool-sacks and sheep-skins in the Jew's house, where David found his amusement amongst the articles of his trade, and he seemed to be making a despairing last appeal to Moses, who kept determined hold of his purse-strings. "Really and truly, my lord Baron, I can't do it. And why not? Can't I make by it? Can't I make a good deal by it?--Look you, my lord Baron, there is David--David, what are you doing? What are you looking at? Come here, David.--Look you, my lord Baron, here he is standing before you and me, I won't give him the least sign, but will go quietly into the next room, and then you can ask David." And with that he walked right shoulder first into the next room. Poor Alick's affairs must have been in a bad way before he would have had anything to do with such a person as David, for if he in his grand new uniform looked fit to draw the king's carriage, David's outer man was so shabby and ill-conditioned that he was worthy of nothing better than dragging a scavenger's cart. But in this sort of business appearance is nothing, the chief thing is to know how to act in any emergency, and David was quite up to the mark there. He had three qualities that stood him in very good stead; firstly, he had the incomparably sly, sharp expression and features of the Jewish usurer, and as he stood before lieutenant von Rambow, chewing a bit of cinnamon stalk he had taken from his mother's store-closet, as a remedy against the close woolly smell of the warehouse, and gazing at him with his head bent a little sideways, and one hand in his pocket, he looked as impudent as if the ghosts of all the rats that had died in the house, during all the years that he had carried on the wool-trade there, had entered into him: secondly, he knew himself to be a far harder and more unyielding man of business than his father, for having had so much to do with wool, skins, &c., which are known to be difficult things to deal with, had taught him much: and thirdly, he was quite up to the most approved method of drawing on, or holding off, a customer, and this he had also learnt in the wool-trade. Naturally Alick could make nothing of such a highly gifted individual, and very soon turned to go away with a heavy heart. David was so pleased with the way in which he had conducted the case in hand, that he began to compassionate the young man, and felt inclined to give him a little friendly counsel, so he advised him to apply to attorney Slus'uhr, "for he has the money, and he will arrange matters for you."