The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

He gave me a long account of some of his adventures, and particularly

one when he robbed the West Chester coaches near Lichfield, when he got

a very great booty; and after that, how he robbed five graziers, in the

west, going to Burford Fair in Wiltshire to buy sheep. He told me he

got so much money on those two occasions, that if he had known where to

have found me, he would certainly have embraced my proposal of going

with me to Virginia, or to have settled in a plantation on some other

parts of the English colonies in America.

He told me he wrote two or three letters to me, directed according to

my order, but heard nothing from me. This I indeed knew to be true,

but the letters coming to my hand in the time of my latter husband, I

could do nothing in it, and therefore chose to give no answer, that so

he might rather believe they had miscarried.

Being thus disappointed, he said, he carried on the old trade ever

since, though when he had gotten so much money, he said, he did not run

such desperate risks as he did before. Then he gave me some account of

several hard and desperate encounters which he had with gentlemen on

the road, who parted too hardly with their money, and showed me some

wounds he had received; and he had one or two very terrible wounds

indeed, as particularly one by a pistol bullet, which broke his arm,

and another with a sword, which ran him quite through the body, but

that missing his vitals, he was cured again; one of his comrades having

kept with him so faithfully, and so friendly, as that he assisted him

in riding near eighty miles before his arm was set, and then got a

surgeon in a considerable city, remote from that place where it was

done, pretending they were gentlemen travelling towards Carlisle and

that they had been attacked on the road by highwaymen, and that one of

them had shot him into the arm and broke the bone.

This, he said, his friend managed so well, that they were not suspected

at all, but lay still till he was perfectly cured. He gave me so many

distinct accounts of his adventures, that it is with great reluctance

that I decline the relating them; but I consider that this is my own

story, not his.

I then inquired into the circumstances of his present case at that

time, and what it was he expected when he came to be tried. He told me

that they had no evidence against him, or but very little; for that of

three robberies, which they were all charged with, it was his good

fortune that he was but in one of them, and that there was but one

witness to be had for that fact, which was not sufficient, but that it

was expected some others would come in against him; that he thought

indeed, when he first saw me, that I had been one that came of that

errand; but that if somebody came in against him, he hoped he should be

cleared; that he had had some intimation, that if he would submit to

transport himself, he might be admitted to it without a trial, but that

he could not think of it with any temper, and thought he could much

easier submit to be hanged.