The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

The assurance with which I delivered this gave the mob gentry a check,

and gave the constable such satisfaction, that he immediately sounded a

retreat, told his people these were not the men, but that he had an

account they were very honest gentlemen; and so they went all back

again. What the truth of the matter was I knew not, but certain it was

that the coaches were robbed at Dunstable Hill, and #560 in money

taken; besides, some of the lace merchants that always travel that way

had been visited too. As to the three gentlemen, that remains to be

explained hereafter.

Well, this alarm stopped us another day, though my spouse was for

travelling, and told me that it was always safest travelling after a

robbery, for that the thieves were sure to be gone far enough off when

they had alarmed the country; but I was afraid and uneasy, and indeed

principally lest my old acquaintance should be upon the road still, and

should chance to see me.

I never lived four pleasanter days together in my life. I was a mere

bride all this while, and my new spouse strove to make me entirely easy

in everything. Oh could this state of life have continued, how had all

my past troubles been forgot, and my future sorrows avoided! But I had

a past life of a most wretched kind to account for, some if it in this

world as well as in another.

We came away the fifth day; and my landlord, because he saw me uneasy,

mounted himself, his son, and three honest country fellows with good

firearms, and, without telling us of it, followed the coach, and would

see us safe into Dunstable. We could do no less than treat them very

handsomely at Dunstable, which cost my spouse about ten or twelve

shillings, and something he gave the men for their time too, but my

landlord would take nothing for himself.

This was the most happy contrivance for me that could have fallen out;

for had I come to London unmarried, I must either have come to him for

the first night's entertainment, or have discovered to him that I had

not one acquaintance in the whole city of London that could receive a

poor bride for the first night's lodging with her spouse. But now,

being an old married woman, I made no scruple of going directly home

with him, and there I took possession at once of a house well

furnished, and a husband in very good circumstances, so that I had a

prospect of a very happy life, if I knew how to manage it; and I had

leisure to consider of the real value of the life I was likely to live.

How different it was to be from the loose ungoverned part I had acted

before, and how much happier a life of virtue and sobriety is, than

that which we call a life of pleasure.