“I suppose so, if you wish it. But I fancy the house is hardly ready for immediate tenancy. You will need linen.” “That’s all right. A couple of hours shopping will fix that.” Mr. Cornelius smiled indulgently. He was thoroughly pro-Sam by now. “True American hustle,” he observed, waggling his white beard. “Well, I see no objection, if you make a point of it. I will find the key for you. Tell me, Mr. Shotter,” he asked as he rummaged about in drawers, “what has caused this great desire on your part to settle in Valley Fields? Of course, as a patriotic inhabitant, I ought not to be surprised. I have lived in Valley Fields all my life, and would not live anywhere else if you offered me a million pounds.” “I won’t.” “I was born in Valley Fields, Mr. Shotter, and I love the place, and I am not ashamed to say so. “‘Breathes there the man with soul so dead,’” inquired Mr. Cornelius, “‘Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned as home his footsteps he hath turn’d from wandering on a foreign strand?’” “Ah!” said Sam. “That’s what we’d all like to know, wouldn’t we?” “‘If such there breathe,’” proceeded Mr. Cornelius, “‘go mark him well! For him no minstrel raptures swell. High though his titles, proud his name, boundless his wealth as wish can claim, despite those titles, power, and pelf, the wretch, concentred all in self----’” “I have a luncheon engagement at 1:30,” said Sam. “‘----Living, shall forfeit fair renown, and, doubly dying, shall go down to the vile dust from whence he sprung, unwept, unhonour’d and unsung.’ Those words, Mr. Shotter----” “A little thing of your own?” “Those words, Mr. Shotter, will appear on the title page of the history of Valley Fields, which I am compiling--a history dealing not only with its historical associations, which are numerous, but also with those aspects of its life which my occupation as house agent has given me peculiar opportunities of examining. I get some queer clients, Mr. Shotter.” Sam was on the point of saying that the clients got a queer house agent, thus making the thing symmetrical, but he refrained. “It may interest you to know that a very well-known criminal, a man who might be described as a second Charles Peace, once resided in the very house which you are renting.” “I shall raise the tone.” “Like Charles Peace, he was a most respectable man to all outward appearances. His name was Finglass. Nobody seems to have had any suspicion of his real character until the police, acting on information received, endeavoured to arrest him for the perpetration of a great bank robbery.” “Catch him?” said Sam, only faintly interested. “No; he escaped and fled the country. But I was asking you what made you settle on Valley Fields as a place of residence. You would seem to have made up your mind very quickly.”