Here I've just been answering the gentleman up stairs a heap of questions concerning that self same old place, and now you come along with another batch of them; just as if that rickety old den was the only spot of interest we had in these parts." "Perhaps that may be the truth," I laughed.

"Just now when the papers are full of these rogues, anything concerning them must be of superior interest of course." And I pressed him again to give me a history of the house and the two thieves who had inhabited it.
"Wa'al," drawled he "'taint much we know about them, yet after all it may be a trifle too much for their necks some day.

Time was when nobody thought especial ill of them beyond a suspicion or so of their being somewhat mean about money.

That was when they kept an inn there, but when the robbery of the Rutland bank was so clearly traced to them, more than one man about here started up and said as how they had always suspected them Shoenmakers of being villains, and even hinted at something worse than robbery.

But nothing beyond that one rascality has yet been proved against them, and for that they were sent to jail for twenty years as you know.