THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF MOLL FLANDERS
101
I durst say those were honest persons, for that I knew one of the gentle men to be a very honest person, and of a good estate in Lancashire.
The constable who came with the hue-and-cry was immediately informed of this, and came over to me to be satisfied from my own mouth; and I assured him that I saw the three gentlemen as I was at the window; that I saw them afterwards at the windows of the room they dined in; that I saw them take horse, and I would assure him I knew one of them to be such a man, that he was a gentleman of a very good estate, and an undoubted character in Lancashire, from whence I was just now upon my journey.
The assurance with which I delivered this gave the mob gentry a check, and gave the constable such satisfaction, that he immediately sounded a retreat, told his people these were not the men, but that he had an account they were very honest gentlemen; and so they went all back again. What the truth of the matter was I knew not, but certain it was that the coaches were robbed at Dunstable Hill, and £560 in money taken; besides, some of the lace merchants that always travel that way had been visited too. As to the three gentlemen, that remains to be explained hereafter.
Well, this alarm stopped us another day, though my spouse told me it was always safest travelling after a robbery, for that the thieves were sure to be gone far enough off when they had alarmed the country: but I was uneasy, and indeed principally lest my old acquaintance should be upon the road still, and should chance to see me.
I never lived four pleasanter days together in my life. I was a mere bride all this while, and my new spouse strove to make me easy in everything. O could this state of life have continued! How had all my past troubles been forgot, and my future sorrows been avoided! But I had a past life of a most wretched kind to account for, some of it in this world is well as in another.
We came away the fifth day; and my landlord, because he saw me uneasy, mounted himself, his son, and three honest country fellows with good fire-arms, and, without telling us of it, followed the coach, and would see us safe into Dunstable.
We could do no less than treat them very handsomely at Dunstable, which cost my spouse about ten or twelve shillings, and something he gave the men for their time too, but my landlord would take nothing for himself.
This was the most happy contrivance for me that could have fallen out; for, had I come to London unmarried, I must either have come to him for the first night's entertainment, or have discovered to him that I had not one acquaintance in the whole city of London, that could receive a poor bride for the first night's lodging with her spouse. But now I made no scruple of going directly home with him, and there I took possession at once of a house well furnished, and a husband in very good circumstances, so that I had a prospect of a very happy life, if I knew how to manage it; and I had leisure to consider of the real value of the life I was likely to live. How different it was to be from the loose part I had acted before, and how much happier a life of virtue and sobriety is, than that which we call a life of pleasure!
O had this particular scene of life lasted, or had I learnt from that time I enjoined it, to have tasted the true sweetness of it, and had I not fallen into that poverty which is the sure bane of virtue, how happy had
