They found nothing for their turn, for the trunk had been searched before, but they discovered several things very much to my satisfaction, as particularly a parcel of money in French pistoles, and some Dutch ducatoons or rix-dollars, and the rest were chiefly two perrywigs, wearing linen and razors, wash-balls, perfumes, and other useful things necessary for a gentleman, which all passed for my husband's, and so I was quit of them.

It was now very early in the morning, and not light, and I knew not well what course to take; for I made no doubt at all but I should be pursued in the morning, and perhaps be taken with the things about me, so I resolved upon taking new measures. I went publicly to an inn in the town with my trunk, as I called it, and having taken the substance out, I did not think the Jumber of it worth my concern; however, I gave it to the landlady of the house, with a charge to take great care of it and lay it up safe till I should come again, and away I walked into the street.

Will you?" says I; "well, I believe you are an honest man; if you will, I shall be glad of it; I'll pay you in reason.'

Why, look ye, mistress," says he; "I won't be out of reason with you then; if I carry you to Colchester, it will be worth five shillings for myself and my horse, for I shall hardly come back to-night."

In short, I hired the honest man and his horse; but when we came to a town upon the road, (Î do not remember the name of it, but it stands upon a river,) I pretended myself very ill; but if he would stay there with me because I was a stranger, I would pay him for himself and his horse with all my heart. This I did because I knew the Dutch gentlemen and their servants would be upon the road that day, either in the stage-coaches or riding post, and I did not know but the drunken fellow, or somebody else that might have seen me at Harwich, might see me again; and so I thought that in one day's stop they would be all gone by.

We lay all that night there, and the next

When I was got into the town, a great way from the inn, I met with an ancient woman who had just opened her door, and I fell into chat with her and asked her a great many wild ques-morning it was not very early when I set out, so tions of things, all remote to my purpose and design; but in my discourse I found by her how the town was situated, that I was in a street that went out towards Hadleigh; but that such a street went towards the water-side, such a street went into the heart of the town, and, at last, such a street went towards Colchester, and so the London road lay there.

I had soon my ends of this old woman, for I only wanted to know which was the London road, and away I walked as fast as I could; not that I intended to go on foot either to London or to Colchester, but I wanted to get quietly away from Ipswich.

I walked about two or three miles, and then I met a plain countryman, who was busy about some husbandry work, I did not know what, and I asked him a great many questions first, not much to the purpose, but at last told him I was going for London; and the coach was full, and I did not get a passage, and asked him if he could not tell me where to hire a horse that would carry double, and an honest man to ride before me to Colchester, so that I might get a place there in the coaches. The honest clown looked earnestly at me, and said nothing for above half a minute; then scratching his poll, "A horse, say you, and to Colchester, to carry double? Why, yes, mistress-a-lack-a-day, you may have horses enough for money."

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Well, friend," said I, "that I take for granted; I don't expect it without money."

66

Why, but mistress," says he, "how much are you willing to give ?"

"Nay," says I again, “friend, I don't know what your rates are in the country here, for I am a stranger; but if you can get one for me, get it as cheap as you can, and I'll give you something for your pains."

"Why, that's honestly said, too," says the countryman.

"Not so honest neither," said I to myself, "if thou knewest all."

that it was near ten o'clock by the time I got to Colchester. It was with no little pleasure that I saw the town where I had spent so many pleasant days, and I made many inquiries after the good old friends I had once had there, but could make little out: they were all dead or removed. The young ladies had been all married or gone to London; the old gentleman, and the old lady that had been my early benefactress, all dead; and, which troubled me most, the young gentleman, my first lover, and afterwards my brotherin-law, was dead; but two sons, men grown, were left of him, but they too were transplanted to London.

I dismissed my old man here, and stayed incognito for three or four days in Colchester, and then took a passage in a waggon, because I I would not venture being seen in the Harwich coaches; but I need not have used so much caution, for there was nobody in Harwich but the woman of the house could have known me; nor was it rational to think that she, who saw me but once, and that by candle-light, should have ever discovered me.

I was now returned to London, and though by the accident of my last adventure I got something considerable, yet I was not fond of any more country rambles; nor should I have ventured abroad again if I had carried the trade on to the end of my days. I gave my governess a history of my travels; she liked the Harwich journey well enough, and in discussing of these things between ourselves she observed, that a thief being a creature that watches the advantages of other people's mistakes, it is impossible but that to one that is vigilant and industrious many opportunities must happen, and therefore she thought that one so exquisitely keen in the trade as I was would scarce fail of something wherever I went.

On the other hand, every branch of my story, if duly considered, may be useful to honest people, and afford a due caution to people of some

sort or other, to guard against the like surprises, || not do so little justice to my neighbour, who was and to have their eyes about them when they so kind to me, as not to acknowledge he had have to do with strangers of any kind, for 'tis reason on his side; though, upon the whole, I do very seldom that some snare or other is not in not find you attempted to take anything, and I their way. The moral, indeed, of all my history, really know not what to do in it." I pressed is left to be gathered by the senses and judgment him to go before a magistrate with me, and if of the reader. I am not qualified to preach to anything could be proved on me that was like a them; let the experience of one creature com-design of robbery, I should willingly submit, but pletely wicked, and completely miserable, be a if not, I expected reparation. storehouse of useful warning to those that read. Just while we were in this debate, and a crowd I am drawing now towards a new variety of of people gathered about the door, came by Sir the scenes of life. Upon my return, being hard- || T. B., an alderman of the city and justice of the ened by a long race of crime and success unpa- peace, and the goldsmith hearing of it, goes out, ralleled, at least in the reach of my own know- and entreated his worship to come in and decide ledge, I had, as I have said, no thoughts of laying the case. down a trade which, if I was to judge by the example of others, must, however, end at last in misery and sorrow.

Give the goldsmith his due, he told his story with a great deal of justice and moderation, and the fellow that had come over and seized upon It was on the Christmas day following, in theme, told his with as much heat and foolish pasevening, that, to finish a long train of wicked-sion, which did me good still, rather than harm. ness, I went abroad to see what might offer in my way, when, going by a working silversmith's in Foster lane, I saw a tempting bait indeed, and not to be resisted by one of my occupation; for the shop had nobody in it that I could see, and a great deal of loose plate lay in the window, and at the seat of the man who usually, as I supposed, worked at one side of the shop.

I went boldly in, and was just going to lay my hand upon a piece of plate, and might have done it and carried it clear off, for any care that the men who belonged to the shop had taken of it; but an officious fellow in a house, not a shop, on the other side of the way, seeing me go in, and observing that there was nobody in the shop, comes running over the street and into the shop, and without asking me what I was, or who, seizes upon me and cries out for the people of the house.

I had not, as I said above, touched anything in the shop, and seeing a glimpse of somebody running over to the shop, I had so much presence of mind as to knock very hard with my foot on the floor of the house, and was just calling out too, when the fellow laid hands on me.

It came then to my turn to speak, and I told his worship that I was a stranger in London, being newly come out of the north, that I lodged in such a place, that I was passing this street, and went into the goldsmith's shop to buy half a dozen of spoons (by good luck I had an old silver spoon in my pocket, which I pulled out), and told him I had carried that spoon to match it with half a dozen of new ones, that they might match some I had in the country.

That seeing nobody in the shop, I knocked with my foot very hard to make the people hear, and had also called aloud with my voice. 'Tis true, there was loose plate in the shop, but that nobody could say I had touched any of it, or gone near it; that a fellow came running into the shop out of the street, and laid hands on me in a furious manner, in the very moment while I was calling for the people in the house; that if he had really had a mind to have done his neighbour any service, he should have stood at a distance, and silently watched to see whether I had touched anything or no, and then have clapped in upon me, and taken me in the fact.

"That is very true," says Mr Alderman, and However, as I had always most courage when turning to the fellow that stopped me, he asked I was most in danger, so when the fellow laid if it was true that I knocked with my foot. He hands on me, I stood very high upon it that I said, "Yes, I had knocked, but that might be became in to buy half a dozen of silver spoons, and cause of his coming." Nay," says the alderto my good fortune it was a silversmith's that man, taking him short, "now you contradict sold plate as well as worked plate for other shops. yourself, for just now you said she was in the The fellow laughed at that part, and put such a shop with her back to you, and did not see you value upon the service that he had done his till you came upon her." Now it was true that neighbour, that he would have it be that I came my back was partly to the street, but yet as my not to buy, but to steal; and raising a great business was of a kind that required me to have crowd, I said to the master of the shop, who by my eyes every way, so I really had a glance of this time was fetched home from some neigh-him running over, as I said before, though he bouring place, that it, was in vain to make a did not perceive it. noise, and enter into talk there of the case. The fellow had insisted that I came to steal, and he must prove it, and I desired we might go before a magistrate without any more words; for I began to see I should be too hard for the man that had seized me. The master and mistress of the shop were really not so violent as the man from t'other side of the way; and the man said, "Mistress, you might come into the shop with a good design for aught I know, but it seemed a dangerous thing for you to come into such a shop as mine is when you see nobody there, and I can.

After a full hearing, the alderman gave it as his opinion that his neighbour was under a mistake, and that I was innocent, and the goldsmith acquiesced in it too, and his wife, and so I was dismissed; but as I was going to depart, Mr Alderman said, "But hold, madam, "if you were designing to buy spoons, I hope you will not let my friend here lose his customer by the mistake." I readily answered, "No, sir, I'll buy the spoons still if he can match my odd spoon, which 1 brought for a pattern;" and the goldsmith showed me some of the very same fashion; so he weighed

the spoons, and they came to thirty-five shillings; so I pulls out my purse to pay him, in which I had near twenty guineas, for I never went without such a sum about me, whatever might happen, and I found it of use at other times as well

as now.

When Mr Alderman saw my money, he said, "Well, madam, now I am satisfied you were wronged, and it was for this reason that I moved that you should buy the spoons, and stayed till you had bought them, for if you had not had the money to pay for them, I should have suspected that you did not come into the shop to buy, for indeed the sort of people who come upon those designs that you have been charged with, are seldom troubled with much gold in their pockets, as I see you are."

not got them, and argued that as he had his goods, and had really lost nothing, it would be cruel to pursue me to death, and have my blood for the bare attempt of taking them. I put the constable in mind that I broke no doors, nor carried any thing away; and when I came to the justice, and pleaded there that I had neither broken anything to get in, nor carried anything out, the justice was inclined to have released me; but the first saucy jade that stopped me, affirming that I was going out with the goods, but that she stopped me, and pulled me back as I was upon the threshold, the justice upon that point committed me, and I was carried to Newgate. That horrid place! My very blood chills at the mention of its name; the place where so many of my comrades had been locked up, and from I smiled, and told his worship, that then I whence they went to the fatal tree; the place owed something of his favour to my money, but where my mother suffered so deeply; where I I hoped he saw reason also in the justice he had was brought into the world, and from whence I done me before. He said, "Yes, he had, but this expected no redemption but by an infamous had confirmed his opinion, and he was fully satis-death to conclude, the place that had so long fied now of my having been injured." So I came off with flying colours. though from an affair in which I was at the very brink of destruction.

expected me, and which with so much art and success I had so long avoided.

I was now fixed indeed. It is impossible to It was but three days after this, that not at all describe the terror of my mind when I was first made cautious by my former danger, as I used to brought in, and when I looked round upon all be, and still pursuing the art which I had so long the horrors of that dismal place. I looked on been employed in, I ventured into a house where myself as lost, and that I had nothing to think of I saw the doors open, and furnished myself, as I but of going out of the world, and that with thought verily without being perceived, with two the utmost infamy; the hellish noise, the roaring, pieces of flowered silks, such as they call brocad-swearing, and clamour, the stench and nastiness, ed silk, very rich. It was not a mercer's shop, nor a warehouse of a mercer, but looked like a private dwelling-house, and was, it seems, inhabited by a man that sold goods for the weavers to the mercers, like a broker or factor.

That I may make short of the black part of this story, I was attacked by two wenches that came open-mouthed at me just as I was going out at the door, and one of them pulled me back into the room, while the other shut the door upon me. I would have given them good words, but there was no room for it; two fiery dragons could not have been more furious then they were. They tore my clothes, bullied and roared as if they would have murdered me; the mistress of the house came next, and then the master, and all outrageous, for a while especially.

and all the dreadful crowd of afflicting things that I saw there, joined together to make the place seem an emblem of hell itself, and a kind of an entrance into it.

Now I reproached myself with the many hints I had had, as I have mentioned above, from my own reason, from the sense of my good circumstances, and of the many dangers I had escaped, to leave off while I was well, and how I had withstood them all, and hardened my thoughts against all fear. It seemed to me that I was hurried on by an inevitable and unseen fate to this day of misery, and that now I was to expiate all my offences at the gallows, that I was now to give satisfaction to justice with my blood, and that I was come to the last hour of my life, and of my wickedness together. These things poured themselves in upon my thoughts in a confused manner, and left me overwhelmed with melancholy and despair.

Then I repented heartily of all my life past, but that repentance yielded me no satisfaction, no peace, no not in the least; because as I said to myself, it was repenting after the power of farther sinning was taken away. I seemed not to mourn that I had committed such crimes, and for the fact as it was an offence against God and my neighbour, but I mourned that I was to be punished for it. I was a penitent, as I thought, not that I had sinned, but that I was to suffer, and this took away all the comfort, and even the hope of my repentance in my own thoughts.

I gave the master very good words, told him the door was open, and things were a temptation to me, that I was poor and distressed, and poverty was what many could not resist, and begged him with tears to have pity on me. The mistress of the house was moved with compassion, and inclined to have let me go, and had almost persuaded her husband to it also, but the saucy wenches were run even before they were sent ; and had fetched a constable, and then the master said he could not go back, I must go before a justice, and answered bis wife that he might come into trouble himself if he should let me go. The sight of the constable, indeed, struck me with terror, and I thought I should have sunk into the ground. I fell into faintings, and indeed the people themselves thought I would have died; when the woman argued again for me, and entreated her husband, seeing they had lost no-though I did not consider dying as it ought to be thing, to let me go. I offered him to pay for the two pieces, whatever the value was, though I had

I got no sleep for several nights or days after I came into that wretched place, and glad I would have been for some time to have died there,

considered neither. Indeed nothing could be filled with more horror to my imagination than

the company that was there. O! if I had been the night almost as ill out of Newgate as I did sent to any place in the world, and not to New-in it. gate, I should have thought myself happy. In the next place, how did the hardened wretches that were there before me triumph over me? "What! Mrs Flanders come to Newgate at last?" "What! Mrs Mary, Mrs Molly!" and after that plain "Moll Flanders!" They thought the devil had helped me, they said, that I had reigned so long; they expected me there many years ago, and was I come at last? Then they flouted me with my dejections, welcomed me to the place, wished me joy, bid me have a good heart, not to be cast down; things might not be so bad as I feared, and the like; then called for brandy, and drank to me; but put it all up to my score, for they told me I was but just come to the college, as they called it, and sure I had money in my pocket, though they had none.

I asked one of this crew how long she had been there ? She said four months. I asked her how the place looked to her when she first came into it?"Just as it did now to me," says she, "dreadful and frightful; that she thought|| she was in hell, and believes so still;" adds she, "but it is natural to me now, I don't disturb myself about it."-"1 suppose," says I, "you are in no danger of what is to follow."—" Nay," says she," for you are mistaken there I assure you, for I am under sentence, only I pleaded my belly; but I am no more with child than the judge that tried me, and I expect to be called down next sessions."

This calling down is calling down to their former judgment, when a woman has been respited for her belly, but proves not to be with child, or if she has been with child, and has been brought to bed.

"Well," says I," and are you thus easy?" Ay," says she; "I cannot help myself; what signifies being sad? If I am hanged there's an end of me," says she, and away she turns dancing, and sings as she goes, the following piece of Newgate wit:

"If I swing by the string, I shall hear the bell ring. And then there's an end to poor Jenny."

I mention this because it would be worth the observation of any prisoner who shall hereafter fall into the same misfortune, and come to that dreadful place (Newgate), how time, necessity, and conversing with the wretches that are there, familiarises the place to them; how at last they become reconciled to that which at first was the greatest dread upon their spirits in the world, and are as impudently cheerful and merry in their misery as they were when out of it.

I cannot say, as some do, this devil is not so black as he is painted; for indeed no colours can represent the place to the life, nor any soul conceive aright of it but those who have been sufferers there. But how hell should become by degrees so natural, and not only tolerable, but even agreeable, is a thing unintelligible but by those who have experienced it as I have.

The same night that I was sent to Newgate, I sent the news of it to my old governess, who was surprised at it, you may be sure, and spent The bell at St Sepulchre's, which tolls upon execu. tion day.

The next morning she came to see me, she did what she could to comfort me, but she saw that was to no purpose. However, as she said, to sink under the weight was but to increase the weight. She immediately applied herself to all the proper methods to prevent the effects of it, which we feared; and first she found out the two fiery jades that had surprised me. She tampered with them, persuaded them, offered them money, and, in a word, tried all imaginable ways to prevent a prosecution. She offered one of the wenches one hundred pounds to get away from her mistress and not to appear against me; but she was resolute, that though she was but a servant maid at three pounds a year wages or thereabouts, she refused it, and would have refused it, as my governess said she believed, if she had offered her five hundred pounds. Then she attacked the other maid; she was not so hardhearted in appearance as the other, and sometimes seemed inclined to be merciful; but the first wench kept her up and changed her mind, and would not so much as let my governess talk with her, but threatened to have her up for tampering with the evidence.

Then she applied to the master, that is to say, the man whose goods had been stolen, and particularly to his wife, who, as I told you, was inclined at first to have some compassion for me. She found the woman the same still; but the man alleged he was bound by the justice that committed me to prosecute, and that he should forfeit his recognizance.

My governess offered to find friends that should get his recognizances off the file, as they call it, and that he should not suffer; but it was not possible to convince him that could be done, or that he could be safe any way in the world but by appearing against me. So I was to have three witnesses of the fact against me, the master and his two maids; that is to say, I was as certain to be cast for my life as I was certain that I was alive, and I had nothing to do but to think of dying and prepare for it. I had but a sad foundation to build upon, as I said before, for all my repentance appeared to me to be only the effect of my fear of death, not a sincere regret for the wicked life that I had lived, and which had brought this misery upon me, or for the offending my creator, who was now suddenly to be my judge.

I lived many days here under the utmost horror of soul. I had death as it were in view, and thought of nothing night and day but of gibbets and halters, evil spirits and devils. It is not to be expressed by words how I was harassed, between the dreadful apprehensions of death and the terror of my conscience reproaching me with my past horrible life.

The ordinary of Newgate came to me, and talked a little in his way, but all his divinity ran upon confessing my crime, as he called it (though he knew not what I was in for), making a full discovery and the like, without which he told me God would never forgive me; and he said so little to the purpose, that I had no manner of consolation from him. And then to observe the poor creature preaching confession and repent