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They entered this house by one door, leaving it by the other, and as they passed through, Glump gave to each man half a sovereign with instructions, entering their names in a small book; and then they went in a body and voted for Griffenbottom and Underwood. Each of the twenty knew nearly all the other twenty, but none of them knew any other men who had been paid by Glump.
When the proposition was made that the treating should come before the bribery Trigger stated in court that he was himself doing his very best to find the man. There might yet be a hope, though, alas, the hope was becoming slighter every hour. His own idea was that Glump had been sent away to Holland by, well, he did not care to name the parties by whom he believed that Glump had been expatriated.
It was admitted, however, that votes had been bought. There were a dozen men, perhaps more than a dozen, who would prove that one Glump had paid them ten shillings a piece between one and two on the day of the election. There was a general belief that perhaps over a hundred had been bought at that rate.
It might be that he would recommend further inquiry, under a special commission, into the practices of the borough, because of the Glump iniquities, and that he should, nevertheless, leave the seats to the sitting members. That seemed to be Mr. Trigger's belief on the evening of the Thursday, as he took his brandy and water in Sir Thomas's private sitting-room.
A lane was parted through the crowd, and Glump, having ascended the platform and bowed to the king, spoke as follows: 'Sire, I would have held my peace, had I not known that I only knew how near was the moment, to which the Chancellor had just referred.
Should His Majesty fail which who shall dare even to imagine in his most secret thoughts? then will be the time for carrying out with rigour the design to which Glump referred, and for which our preparations are even now all but completed. The failure of the former will render the latter imperative.
'The information which the worthy Glump has given us, he said, 'might have been of considerable import at the present moment, but for that other design already referred to, which naturally takes precedence.
But Trigger was ready to swear that he did not know whence Glump had got the money, and Glump himself was, nobody knew where Glump was, but strange whispers respecting Glump were floating about the borough. Trigger was disposed to believe that they, on their side, could prove that Glump had really been employed by Westmacott's people to vitiate the election.
On the Saturday morning, when the case was still going on, to the great detriment of Baron Grumble's domestic happiness, Glump had not yet been caught. It seemed that the man had no wife, no relative, no friend. The woman at whose house he lodged declared that he often went and came after this fashion.
Griffenbottom, who was smoking his midday cigar in Sir Thomas's arm-chair, while Sir Thomas was endeavouring to master the first book of Lord Verulam's later treatise "De dignitate scientiarum," seated in a cane-bottomed chair in a very small bed-room up-stairs. By consent the question of treating came next. Heaven and earth were being moved to find Glump.
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