“Bah! His managing clerk has it safe enough; he will proceed by the proper legal course to claim the estate which this waiver of Wilton’s at once will put me in possession of. Of course Wilton will dispute it. We shall swear he signed to be released from the judgments we held against him, prove his signature on oath, I obtain the estate, and you and your friends a rich reward. Therefore, having finally resolved to pursue this plan, the deed cannot be better placed than where it is now.” Mr. Chewkle shook his head. He had rather the deed had been anywhere but where it now was. He, however, interposed no further objection, but suggested that he should pay a visit to Messrs. Jukes and Nutty to sound them upon the matter. “You see, sir, this plan makes us commit perjury as well as forgery,” he exclaimed, laying such emphasis on the two crimes, that Mr. Grahame started, and involuntarily shuddered. “Now,” he continued, “it is not every man who has the pluck to take a false oath and stick to it--stick to it, that’s the rub, sir. Taking a false oath ain’t much, but it’s when the counsel begins to badger you, and to ask you this question and that, sometimes about the subjeck, and sometimes about things as has nothen to do with it, and then comes slap back to the subjeck again, so as to jerk a contradictory confession out on you; it’s that as tries you. I ain’t got much doubt about Jukes; he can stand any amount o’ cross-examining, he can, but it’s t’other I ain’t certain about. However, I will go onto ’em at once, sound ’em cautiously without using any names”---- “Right,” observed Mr. Grahame, approvingly. “And if they agrees, I will come to terms with them; and if they don’t, sir”---- “We must get some one else,” suggested Mr. Grahame. Chewikle passed his hand over his chin. “Yes,” he replied, “that is, if they are to be got.” Very few words more were interchanged between them ere Mr. Chewkle quitted the house, cursing the deed which he had with such an exercise of cunning purloined, and which would require so much ingenuity to restore, and leave him unsuspected of the theft. “_Perjury and Forgery!_” exclaimed Mr. Grahame, as soon as he knew himself to be alone. “This is hastening on in the career of crime. What if some voice were to howl in the ear of Mistress Grahame that her husband was a perjurer and a forger! A Grahame, one of the race that has prided itself upon never having cowered under the taint of dishonour--a wretched criminal--liable to be dragged, with all the horrors of the lowest degradation, to the bar of justice, thence to work out in chains a fearful servitude, in the company of wretches the most desperate. Into what a frightful, position has my pecuniary embarrassment hurled me? Henceforth I shall live in perpetual horror of discovery, of being called upon at any moment to face an officer to”----