Silas Wegg is a character in Our Mutual Friend. A working-class man with a wooden leg, he makes his living selling ballads on the street corner next to the house that Mr. and Mrs. Boffin later purchase, for which he feels a deluded sense of ownership. The illiterate Mr. Boffin, believing him "a literary man," hires him to read aloud to him in the evenings, a position which Wegg considers an opportunity for social advancement. Mr Boffin later entrusts him with the care of "Boffin's Bower," or the old Harmon house. Wegg then begins to conspire with Mr. Venus to search the dust mounds surrounding the Bower for hidden wealth.