I dressed myself up as well as the best clothes that I suffered myself ever to appear in there would allow me, and went to the press-yard, but had for some time a hood over my face. He said little to me at first, but asked me if I knew him. I told him, "Yes, very well;" but as I concealed my face, so I counterfeited my voice, that he had not the least guess at who I was. He asked me where I had seen him; I told him between Dunstable and Brickill; but turning to the keeper that stood by, I asked him if I might be admitted to talk with him alone. "Yes, yes, as much as I pleased," and so very civilly withdrew. I took him by the hand. "Come, my dear,” said I," sit down, and let us compare our sorrows: I am a prisoner in this very house, and in a much worse circumstance than you, and you will be satisfied I do not come to insult you, when I tell you the particulars." And with this we sat down together, and I told him so much of my story as I thought was convenient, bringing it at last to my being reduced to great poverty, and representing myself as fallen into some company that led me to relieve my distresses by a way that I had been utterly unacquainted with, and that they making an attempt at a tradesman's house, I was He turned pale and stood speechless, like one seized upon for having been but just at the thunder-struck, and not able to conquer the sur- door, the maid-servant pulling me in; that I prise, said no more but this, "Let me sit down;" || neither had broke any lock, or taken anything and sitting down by a table, he laid his elbow away, and notwithstanding that, I was brought upon it, and leaning his head on his hand, fixed in guilty and sentenced to die; but that the his eyes on the ground as one stupid. judges having been made sensible of the hardship of my circumstances, had obtained leave to remit the sentence, upon my consenting to be transported. As soon as he was gone, and I had shut the door, I threw off my hood, and bursting out into tears, My dear," says I, "do you not know me?" 66 I cried so vehemently on the other hand, that it was a good while ere I could speak any more; but after I had given some vent to my passion by tears, I repeated the same words, "My dear, do you not know me?" At which he answered "Yes," and said no more a good while. After some time continuing in the surprise, as above, he cast up his eyes towards me and said, "How could you be so cruel?" I did not readily understand what he meant ; and I answered, "How can you call me cruel? What have I been cruel to you in?" "To come to me," says he, " in such a place as this, is it not to insult me? I have not robbed you, at least not on the highway." I perceived by this that he knew nothing of the miserable circumstances I was in, and thought that, having got some intelligence of his being there, I had come to upbraid him with his leaving me; but I had too much to say to him to be affronted, and told him in a few words, that I was far from coming to insult him, but at best I came to condole mutually; that he would be casily satisfied that I had no such view, when I should tell him that my condition was worse than his, and that many ways. I told him I fared 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 account of things that had befallen me since I saw him; but I told him I had seen him since he might think I had, and then gave him an account how I had seen him at Brickill; 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 Little Brickill, he was surprised. "And was it you, my dear," said he, “that gave the check to the mob that was at our heels there He looked a little concerned at the general ex- at Brickill?". Yes," said I, "it was I inpression of my condition being worse than his; deed; and then I told him the particulars which but with a kind of smile, looked a little wildly, I had observed of him there." Why, then," and said, "How can that be? When you see me said he, "it was you that saved my life at that fettered, and in Newgate, and two of my compa- time, and I am glad I owe my life to you, for I nions executed already, can you say your condi-will pay the debt to you now, and I'll deliver you tion is worse than mine ?" from the present condition you are in, or I will die in the attempt." "Come, my dear," says I; "we have a long piece of work to do, if I should begin to relate, or you to hear, my unfortunate history: but if you are disposed to hear it, you will soon conclude with me that my condition is worse than yours." "How is that possible," says he again, "when expect to be cast for my life the very next sessions?" "Yes," says I, "it is very possible; when I shall tell you that I have been cast for my life three sessions ago, and am now under sentence of death, is not my case worse than yours?" 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."—"It was 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 off from Hockly quite another way, and had come over the inclosed country into Brickill, not by the road, and were sure they had not been seen by anybody. Here he gave 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 them, lived always in town, having good store of acquaintance; that she gave them perfect intelligence of persons going cut 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 life, 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. Ile 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 whole 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 terrible wounds indeed, particularly one by a pistol bullet, which broke his arm, and another with a sword, which run 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 the place where it was done, pretending they were gentlemen travelling towards Carlisle ; that they had been attacked on the road by highwaymen, and that one of them had shot him in the arm. This he said his friend managea so well that they were not suspected, but lay still till he was cured. He gave me also so many distinct accounts of his adventures that it is with great reluctance that I decline the relating them. But 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 the 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 other would come in against him; that he thought, indeed, when he first saw me, I had been one that came of that crrand; but that if nobody 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 casier submit to be hanged. I blamed him for that, and told him I blamed him on two accounts; first, because, if he was transported, there might be an hundred ways for him, that was a gentleman, and a bold enterprising man, to find his way back again, and perhaps some ways and means to come back before he went. He smiled at that part, and said he should like the last the best of the two, for he had a kind of horror upon his mind at his being sent over to the plantations, as the Romans sent condemned slaves to work in the mines; that he thought the passage into another state, let it be what it would, much more tolerable at the gallows, and that this was the general notion of all the gentlemen who were driven by the exigence of their fortunes to take the road; that at the place of execution there was at least an end of all the miseries of the present state; and, as for what was to follow, a man was, in his opinion, as likely to repent sincerely in the last fortnight of his life under the pressures and agonies of a jail, and the condemned hole, as he would ever be in the woods and wilderness of America; that servitude and hard labour were things gentlemen could never stoop to; that it was but the way to force them to be their own executioners afterwards, which was much worse; and that therefore he could not have any patience when he did but think of being transported. I used the utmost of my endeavour to persuade him, and joined that known woman's rhetoric to it-I mean that of tears. I told him the infamy of a public execution was certainly a greater pressure upon the spirits of a gentleman than all the mortifications that he could meet with abroad could be; that he had at least in the other a chance for his life, whereas here he had none at all; that it was the casiest thing in the world for him to manage the captain of the ship, who were, generally speaking, men of good humour, and some gallantry; and a small matter of conduct, especially if there was any money to be had, would make way for him to buy himself off, when he came to Virginia. He looked wishfully at me, and I thought I guessed at what he meant, that is to say, that he had no money; but I was mistaken, his meaning was another way. 66 You hinted just now, my dear," said he, that there might be a way of coming back before I went; by which I understand you, that it might be possible to buy it off here. I had rather give 2001. to prevent going, than 100%. to be set at liberty when I came there." "That is, my dear," said I, "because you do not know the place as I do." "That may be," said he, "and yet I believe, as well as you know it, you would do the same, unless it is because, as you told me, you have a mother there." I told him as to my mother she must be dead many years before; and as for my other relations that I might have there, I knew them not. That since my misfortunes had reduced me to the condition I had been in for some years, I had not kept up any correspondence with them, and that he would easily believe I should find but a cold reception from them if I should be put to make my first visit in the condition of a transported felon; that, therefore, if I went thither, I resolved not to see them, but that I had many views in going there, which took off all the uncasy part of it; and if he found himself obliged to go also, I should easily instruct him how to manage himself so as never to go a servant at all, especially since I found he was not destitute of money, which was the only friend in such a condition. He smiled, and said he did not tell me he had money. I took him up short, and told him I hoped he did not understand by my speaking that I should expect any supply from him if he had money; that on the other hand, though I had not a great deal, yet I did not want, and while I had any I would rather add to him than weaken him, seeing whatever he had I knew in the case of transportation he would have occasion for it all. He expressed himself in a most tender manner upon that head. He told me what money he had was not a great deal, but that he would never hide any of it from me if I wanted it, and assured me he did not speak with any such apprehensions; that he was only intent upon what I had hinted to him; that here he knew what to do, but there he should be the most helpless wretch alive. I told him he frighted and terrified himself with that which had no terror in it; that if he had money, as I was glad to hear he had, he might not only avoid the servitude supposed to be the consequence of transportation, but begin the world upon a new foundation, and that such a one as he could not fail of success in, with but the common application usual in such cases; that he could not but call to mind that it was what I had recommended to him many years before, and had proposed it for our mutual subsistence, and restoring our fortunes in the world; and I would tell him now, that to convince him both of the certainty of it, and of being fully acquainted of the method, and also fully satisfied in the probability of success, he should first see me deliver myself from the necessity of going over at all, and then that I would go with him freely and of my own choice, and perhaps carry enough with me to satisfy him that I did not offer it for want of being able to live without assistance from him; but that I thought our mutual misfortunes had been such as were sufficient to reconcile us both to quitting this part of the world, and living where nobody could upbraid us with what was past, or we being in any dread of a prison, and without the agonies of a condemned hole to drive us to it; where we should look back on all our past disasters with infinite satisfaction, when we should consider that our enemies should entirely forget us, and that we should live as new people in a new world, nobody having anything to say to us, or we to them. 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 that 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 towards London than Dunstable, and why when we parted there he told me it was not convenient for him to come any farther towards London, as he would otherwise have done. I have observed that the account of his life, would have been made a much more pleasing history than this of mine; and indeed nothing in it was more strange than this part, viz. that he had 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 one place for a year or two at a time, keeping himself and a man-servant to wait on him, and has often sat in the coffee houses, and heard the very people whom he had robbed give accounts of their being robbed, and of the places 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 they were 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. However, the offer which was made to him of admitting him to transportation was made, as I understood, upon the intercession of some great person who pressed him hard to accept of it before a trial; and indeed, as he knew there were several that might come in against him, I thought his friend was in the right, and I lay at him night and day to delay it no longer. At last, with much difficulty, he gave his consent, and as he was not therefore admitted to transportation in court, and on his petition as I was, so he found himself under a difficulty to avoid embarking himself, as I had said he might have done; his great friend, who was his intercessor for the favour of that grant, having given security for him that he should transport himself, and not return within the term. This hardship broke all my measures, for the steps I took afterwards for my own deliverance were hereby rendered wholly ineffectual, unless I would abandon him, and let him go to America by himself; than which he protested he would much rather venture, although he was certain to go directly to the gallows. I must now return to my own case. The time of my being transported according to my sentence was near at hand. My governess, who continued my fast friend, had tried to obtain a pardon, but it could not be done unless with an expense too heavy for my purse; considering that to be left naked and empty, unless I had resolved to return to my old trade again, had been worse than my transportation, because there I knew I could live, here I could not. The good minister stood very hard on another account to prevent my being transported also; but he was answered, that indeed my life had been given me at his first solicitations, and therefore he ought to ask no more. He was sensibly grieved at my going, because, as he said, he feared I should lose the good impressions which a prospect of death had at first made on me, and which were since increased by his instructions; and the pious gentleman was exceedingly concerned about me on that ac count. On the other hand, I really was not so solicitous about it, as I was before, but I industriously concealed my reasons for it from the minister, and to the last he did not know but that I went with the utmost reluctance and affliction. It was in the month of February that I was, with seven other convicts, as they called us, delivered to a merchant that traded to Virginia, on board a ship, riding, as they called it, in Deptford reach. The officer of the prison delivered us on board, and the master of the vessel gave a discharge for us. We were for that night clapped under hatches, and kept so close, that I thought I should have been suffocated for want of air, and the next morning the ship weighed, and fell down the river to a place they call Bugby's Hole; which was done, as they told us, by the agreement of the merchant, that all opportunity of escape should be taken from us. However, when the ship came thither, and cast anchor, we were allowed more liberty, and particularly were permitted to come upon the deck, but not upon the quarter deck, that being kept particularly for the captain, and for passengers. When by the noise of the men over my head, and the motion of the ship, I perceived that they were under sail, I was at first greatly surprised, fearing we should go away directly, and that our friends would not be admitted to see us anymore; but I was easy soon after when I found they had come to anchor again, and soon after that we had notice given by some of the men where we were, that the next morning we should have the liberty to come upon deck, and to have our friends come and see us, if we had any. All that night I lay upon the hard boards of the deck, as the other prisoners did, but we afterwards had the liberty of little cabins for such of us as had any bedding to lay in them; and room to stow any box or trunk for clothes and linen, if we had it, (which might well be put in) for some of them had neither shirt or shift, or a rag of linen or woollen, but what was on their backs, or a farthing of money to help themselves; and yet I did not find but they fared well enough in the ship, especially the women, who got money of the seamen for washing their clothes sufficient to purchase any common things that they wanted. When the next morning we had liberty to come upon the deck, I asked one of the officers of the ship whether I might not have the liberty to send a letter on shore, to let my friends know where the ship lay, and to get some necessary things sent to me. This was, it seems, the boatswain, a very civil, courteous sort of a man, who told me I should have that or any other liberty that I desired, that he could allow me with safety. I told him I desired no other; and he answered that the ship's boat would go up to London the next tide, and he would order my letter to be carried. Accordingly, when the boat went off, the boatswain came to me, and told me the boat was going off, and that he went in it himself, and asked me if my letter was ready; he would take care of it. I had prepared myself, you may be sure, pen, ink, and paper beforehand, and I had gotten a letter ready directed to my governess, and enclosed another for my fellow-prisoner, which, however, I did not let her know was my husband, not to the last. In that to my governess I let her know where the ship lay, and pressed her earnestly to send me what things I knew she had got ready for me for my voyage. When I gave the boatswain the letter I gave him a shilling with it, which I told him was for the charge of a messenger or porter, which I entreated him to send with the letter as soon as he came on shore, that if possible I might have an answer brought back by the same hand, that I might know what was become of my things," For, sir," says I, "if the ship should go away before I have them on board, I am undone." I took care, when I gave him the shilling, to let him see that I had a little better furniture about me than the ordinary prisoners, for he saw that I had a purse, and in it a pretty deal of money, and I found that the very sight of it immediately furnished me with very different treatment from what I should otherwise have met with in the ship; for though he was very courteous indeed before, in a kind of natural compassion to me, as a wo 66 Aye," says I again, "she would give a hundred pounds, I believe, to deliver me from this dreadful condition I am in." "Would she so?" says he; "for half the money, I believe, I could put you in a way how to deliver yourself." But this he spoke softly that nobody could hear. "Alas! sir," said I, "but then that must be such a deliverance as, if I should be taken again, would cost me my life." "Nay," said he, "if you were once out of the ship you must look to yourself afterwards, that I can say nothing to;" so we dropped the discourse for that time. In the mean time my governess, faithful to the last moment, conveyed my letter to the prison to my husband, and got an answer to it, and the next day came down herself to the ship, bringing me in the first place a sea-bed, as they call it, and all its furniture, such as was convenient, but not to let the people think it was extraordinary. She brought with her a sea-chest; that is a chest such as are made for seamen, with all the conveniences in it, and filled with everything almost that I could want; and in one of the corners of the chest, where there was a private drawer, was my bank of money, that is to say, so much of it as I had resolved to carry with me; for I ordered a part of my stock to be left behind me to be sent afterwards in such goods as I should want when I came to settle; for money in that country is not of much use where all things are bought for tobacco, much more it is a great loss to carry it from hence. But my case was particular; it was by no means proper to me to go thither without money or goods, and for a poor convict that was to be sold as soon as I came on shore, to carry with me a cargo of goods would be to have notice taken of it, and perhaps to have them seized by the public; so I took part of my stock with me thus, and left the other part with my governess. My governess now brought me a great many other things, but it was not proper for me to look too well provided in the ship till I knew what kind of a captain we should have. When she came into the ship, I thought she would have died indeed, her heart sunk at the sight of me, and at the thoughts of parting with me in that condition, and she cried so intolerably I could not for a long time have any talk with her. I took that time to read my fellow-prisoner's letter, which however greatly perplexed me. He told me he was determined to go, but found it would be impossible for him to be discharged time enough for going in the same ship, and which was more than all, he began to question whether they would give him leave to go in what ship he pleased, though he did voluntarily transport himself; but that they would see him put on board such a ship as they should direct, and, that he would be charged upon the captain as other convict prisoners were; so that he began to be in despair of seeing me till he came to Vir ginia, which made him almost desperate, seeing that, on the other hand, if I should be there, if any accident of the sea, or of mortality should take me away, he should be the most undone creature there in the world. This was very perplexing, and I knew not what course to take. I told my governess the story of the boatswain, and she was mighty eager with me to treat with him; but I had no mind to it, till I heard whether my husband, or fellowprisoner, so she called him, could be at liberty to go with me or no. At last I was forced to let her into the whole matter, except only that of his being my husband. I told her I had made a positive bargain or agreement with him to go if he could get the liberty of going in the same ship, | and that I found he had money. Then I read a long lecture to her of what I proposed to do when I came there; how we could plant, settle, and in short, grow rich without any more adventures; and, as a great secret, I told her that we were to marry as soon as he came on board. She soon agreed cheerfully to my going when she heard this, and she made it her business from that time to get him out of the prison in time so that he might go in the same ship with me, which at last was brought to pass, though with great difficulty, and not without all the forms of a transported prisoner convict, which he really was not yet, for he had not been tried, and which was a great mortification to him. As our fate was now determined, and we were both on board, actually bound to Virginia, in the despicable quality of transported convicts, destined to be sold for slaves, I for five years, and he under bonds and security not to return to England any more as long as he lived, he was very much dejected and cast down; the mortification of being brought on board, as he was, like a prisoner, piqued him very much, since it was first told him he should transport himself, and so that he might go as a gentleman at liberty. It is true, he was not ordered to be sold when he came there, as we were, and for that reason he was obliged to pay | for his passage to the captain, which we were not; as to the rest he was as much at a loss as a child what to do with himself, or with what he had, but by directions. In this condition I lay for three weeks in the ship, not knowing whether I should have my husband with me or no; and therefore not resolving how, or in what manner, to receive the honest boatswain's proposal, which indeed be |