I told him I fared the worse for being taken in the prison for one Moll
Flanders, who was a famous successful thief, that all of them had heard
of, but none of them had ever seen; but that, as he knew well, was none
of my name. But I placed all to the account of my ill fortune, and
that under this name I was dealt with as an old offender, though this
was the first thing they had ever known of me. I gave him a long
particular of things that had befallen me since I saw him, but I told
him if I had seen him since he might think I had, and then gave him an
account how I had seen him at Brickhill; how furiously he was pursued,
and how, by giving an account that I knew him, and that he was a very
honest gentleman, one Mr. ----, the hue-and-cry was stopped, and the
high constable went back again.
He listened most attentively to all my story, and smiled at most of the
particulars, being all of them petty matters, and infinitely below what
he had been at the head of; but when I came to the story of Brickhill,
he was surprised. 'And was it you, my dear,' said he, 'that gave the
check to the mob that was at our heels there, at Brickhill?' 'Yes,'
said I, 'it was I indeed.' And then I told him the particulars which I
had observed him there. 'Why, then,' said he, 'it was you that saved
my life at that time, and I am glad I owe my life to you, for I will
pay the debt to you now, and I'll deliver you from the present
condition you are in, or I will die in the attempt.' I told him, by no means; it was a risk too great, not worth his running
the hazard of, and for a life not worth his saving. 'Twas no matter
for that, he said, it was a life worth all the world to him; a life
that had given him a new life; 'for,' says he, 'I was never in real
danger of being taken, but that time, till the last minute when I was
taken.' Indeed, he told me his danger then lay in his believing he had
not been pursued that way; for they had gone from Hockey quite another
way, and had come over the enclosed country into Brickhill, not by the
road, and were sure they had not been seen by anybody.
Here he gave me a long history of his life, which indeed would make a
very strange history, and be infinitely diverting. He told me he took
to the road about twelve years before he married me; that the woman
which called him brother was not really his sister, or any kin to him,
but one that belonged to their gang, and who, keeping correspondence
with him, lived always in town, having good store of acquaintance; that
she gave them a perfect intelligence of persons going out of town, and
that they had made several good booties by her correspondence; that she
thought she had fixed a fortune for him when she brought me to him, but
happened to be disappointed, which he really could not blame her for;
that if it had been his good luck that I had had the estate, which she
was informed I had, he had resolved to leave off the road and live a
retired, sober live but never to appear in public till some general
pardon had been passed, or till he could, for money, have got his name
into some particular pardon, that so he might have been perfectly easy;
but that, as it had proved otherwise, he was obliged to put off his
equipage and take up the old trade again.