“Scoundrel!” thought Gomer. He fixed his eye upon Chewkle, and said—
“That is as Providence directs! For myself, I have important business in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and Dublin, which must be transacted, and I have no one to nominate in my place if I go to Harleydale.”
“Could I do the work?” exclaimed Chewkle, falling plump into the trap.
“You?” exclaimed Gomer, inquiringly.
“Yes; I am used to all sorts of commission work, bill-broking and collecting. I’ll hunt up a man with any officer in the force, and I’ll dun a man out of his account and out of his mind with any collector in the kingdom.”
“What commission?” asked Gomer. “Oh! I’ll leave that to you. I has five per cent on small things, and two and a-half on large, and my expenses, but I’ll leave that to you.”
Gomer sat and mused, and expressed doubts as to whether he could trust him, and played so much and so well with his fish that the latter absolutely gorged himself with the hook. He importuned the dwarf so urgently at last to employ him in the business he spoke of, that the little man consented, on condition that he started to Birmingham by the three o’clock train that day.
To this proposition Chewkle assented readily, and declared himself ready to go home to his lodgings at once, get a few things for his journey, and then depart on his mission. Gomer accompanied him, furnished him with papers, instructions, and money for his travelling expenses, and never left him until he saw the train leave the platform at Euston Square Station, with Chewkle inside, bound for Birmingham.
Nathan Gomer returned to his solicitor’s, and it was late at night before he saw his bed. The following morning, an application was made in the Court of Chancery in the case of Maybee, and an eloquent Counsel dwelt long and forcibly on the terrible punishment inflicted upon a man imprisoned for eighteen years, through an act of negligence on the part of his solicitor.
The Lord Chancellor granted an order for the man to be produced in Court, and on the following day, wan, haggard, and sallow in the face, dirty and tattered in his attire, he was brought before the Lord Chancellor, in the custody of an officer of the Queen’s Prison. The Lord Chancellor interrogated him, and elicited much that excited great commiseration, and his discharge was ordered forthwith.