which I could ever afterwards rely when ever I had to draw upon it. I can only say that when I had any difficulty before me, any very private inquiry which had to be made among the shady byways of city life, any delicate little negotiation to be carried through for a client, which was out of my own line, George Carter could always be relied upon to get the matter through. We had a working understanding between us; on his side he was never to pass over the border line of strict professional propriety, so as to jeopardize the good name which I was striving to acquire among my brethren in the profession; and on my side I was never to be unduly inquisitive as to his method of working either before or after events, but to trust him implicitly. In a court running out of Old Broad Street, London, the man Grimes carried on his business, nominally that of a lawyer; his best friend would have felt constrained to admit that his personal character was shady, — the members of the legal profession who had to do business with him did not hesitate to call him, in professional con fidence of course, an unmitigated scoundrel. Taken at an early age into the office of a low-class lawyer in London, he had suc ceeded in making himself so useful in the office, that his employer had, for the sake of securing his continuous services, given him his articles; and before the old man's death, which occurred soon after the five years' apprenticeship came to an end, Grimes had become a fully-fledged attor ney and solicitor, and in a few years after starting had established a reputation for smartness which soon procured for him a lucrative practice in criminal cases. Not that his business had been conf1ned exclu sively to advocacy; by the skillful use of ready money loaned out in small sums at exorbitant interest to the needy and im pecunious he had become a master in the occult science of making money beget money; and after a few years he gave up
advocacy and devoted his energies to what he termed his private practice, money-lend ing. In this delicate walk of life he was an adept; his tongue was so smooth, his man ners so engaging that the poor sheep never felt the keen edge of the shears which were fleecing him, until it came to the last tuft of wool left on the poor wretch's back; then, and not till then, was he turned adrift to face, as best he might, the pitiless blasts of beggardom. Such men as Grimes have little difficulty in thriving in London. There are always silly blue-bottle flies or timid moths to be found, willing and indeed thank ful to rest for a while on the silken threads so cunningly stretched out before them as to appear nothing more than a quiet restingplace for legs and wings, wearied with bat tling against the contrary winds of fortune; the true nature of the silken cord is not disclosed till the luckless wretch tries to break loose, then ever tighter and tighter grows the tangled coil, rendering escape impossible. And so Grimes flourished in the city, useful to a certain shady class of clients who want dirty work done, and think him a smart man of business; useful also to the needy and impecunious, as a tem porary haven from the storm, until such time as they are made to feel the treacher ous nature of the anchorage to which they have been driven; but a living terror to the honest poor; and a veritable Pariah amongst the members of the legal profession. George Croome had got into the meshes of this man Grimes, who held judgments recorded against him on various notes of hand given for money lent to pay gambling debts; arrest and imprisonment of the per son for debt had not then been abolished by the English law, and now I had to summon him to the rectory to take his place as chief mourner at the grave-side, and my dread was that Grimes, who would be sure to hear of the old clergyman's death, would stick at nothing, but have George arrested at the rectory, or even at the grave-side, sooner
