Leaves from an English Solicitor's Note Book. told me his story; how he had seen that the only safe course to get George Croome out of the country, and throw the sheriff's officer on the wrong scent, was to take George's place at the Green Dragon, where he was not known; that after closing the off1ce on Thursday evening he went home, dressed himself in black clothes, and betook himself with George Croome's portmanteau and travelling rug to the Green Dragon, in formed the landlady that he was the gentle man for whom I had written to secure the room, that he wished to spend the evening quietly by himself, as he was in great grief, having recently lost his father; that he was going to the funeral the next morning early, but would come back again in the evening for his luggage in time to catch the mail train from Shoreditch. The plan succeeded admirably. The sher iff's officer had been very neatly hoodwinked; he had bribed the " boots " of the hotel, and had pumped him as to the movements of the gentleman who owned the portmanteau with G. C. printed on it, and kept quiet all day waiting for Carter's return in the even ing. Carter then told me with much glee how he had got a good start of the officer by arriving earlier and leaving earlier than he told the landlady he would do, and had taken the luggage to the station, and had placed it in the carriage under the care of the guard, and was just hurrying away from the station when he was tapped on the shoul der by the officer, and told he must con
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sider himself in custody. He felt bound to carry out his plot to the finish and merely remarked, " I thought I had managed to get away clear; it is Grimes, I suppose; well, take me somewhere for the night, till I can get my solicitor to arrange the thing to morrow," and had gone off like a lamb to Cursitor Street, as soon as he saw the train with the luggage safe in the carriage moving out of the station, and knew that before night George would be safely on board the boat steaming to Antwerp. I felt it my duty to expostulate with Car ter for sailing so very near to the wind, but I could not keep it up when he replied, "Well, sir, if that sharp sheriff's officer did not know a poor lawyer's clerk from a born gentleman, he is not up to his business." Good faithful clerk, he died at his work : he was knocked over by a cab in a crowded thoroughfare of London one day when he was out on some business of mine, and although terribly injured, he would not allow anything to be done for him at the hospital till he had sent for me, to report to me on all the matters he had in hand; after that he let the surgeons do the best they could, but they could not save him, and he died clasping my hand. He was buried at the expense of the two maiden sisters, and, at their brother's request, in the burial ground of their late father's church in the pretty village on the borders of Epping Forest; and I could only echo the words, " good and faithful servant."
