The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

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.