I pressed this home to him with so many arguments, and answered all his
own passionate objections so effectually that he embraced me, and told
me I treated him with such sincerity and affection as overcame him;
that he would take my advice, and would strive to submit to his fate in
hope of having the comfort of my assistance, and of so faithful a
counsellor and such a companion in his misery. But still he put me in
mind of what I had mentioned before, namely, that there might be some
way to get off before he went, and that it might be possible to avoid
going at all, which he said would be much better. I told him he should
see, and be fully satisfied, that I would do my utmost in that part
too, and if it did not succeed, yet that I would make good the rest.
We parted after this long conference with such testimonies of kindness
and affection as I thought were equal, if not superior, to that at our
parting at Dunstable; and now I saw more plainly than before, the
reason why he declined coming at that time any farther with me toward
London than Dunstable, and why, when we parted there, he told me it was
not convenient for him to come part of the way to London to bring me
going, as he would otherwise have done. I have observed that the
account of his life would have made a much more pleasing history than
this of mine; and, indeed, nothing in it was more strange than this
part, viz. that he carried on that desperate trade full five-and-twenty
years and had never been taken, the success he had met with had been so
very uncommon, and such that sometimes he had lived handsomely, and
retired in place for a year or two at a time, keeping himself and a
man-servant to wait on him, and had often sat in the coffee-houses and
heard the very people whom he had robbed give accounts of their being
robbed, and of the place and circumstances, so that he could easily
remember that it was the same.
In this manner, it seems, he lived near Liverpool at the time he
unluckily married me for a fortune. Had I been the fortune he
expected, I verily believe, as he said, that he would have taken up and
lived honestly all his days.
He had with the rest of his misfortunes the good luck not to be
actually upon the spot when the robbery was done which he was committed
for, and so none of the persons robbed could swear to him, or had
anything to charge upon him. But it seems as he was taken with the
gang, one hard-mouthed countryman swore home to him, and they were like
to have others come in according to the publication they had made; so
that they expected more evidence against him, and for that reason he
was kept in hold.