The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

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.