The plaintiff was a traveller for the defendants’ brewery at a monthly salary. He was also manager of the defendants’ wine and spirit store for a term at a salary calculated on profits. Subsequently the defendants discovered that the plaintiff had advanced loans of money to several of the hotels which they (the defendants) were supplying with goods, and that in some instances he held bills of sale over the stock and effects as security for the advances he had made, and that in other instances, though he had taken no bill of sale, he had the houses to whom he had made advances under his control. Thereupon the defendants informed the plaintiff that they could not permit him to go on supplying these hotels with their goods, and that unless he became responsible to them for the payment of the goods supplied by them to these houses he would be prohibited from continuing to supply them. They agreed, however, that if he would guarantee them in the way proposed they would, in addition to his salaries as their manager and traveller; give him a commission of a certain rate per cent. on the goods supplied. The plaintiff verbally agreed to this arrangement. The accounts of some of the hotels were unpaid at the time the plaintiff sued the defendants in respect of his salary, and the defendants counter-claimed in respect of these accounts.