THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF MOLL FLANDERS
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says he to the journeyman, 'you must go along with us; I hope you are not above the constable's power, though your master is.'
The fellow looked like a condemned thief, and hung back, then looked at his master, as if he could help him; and he, like a fool, encouraged the fellow to be rude, and he truly resisted the constable, and pushed him back with a good force when he went to lay hold on him, at which the constable knocked him down, and called out for help. Immediately the shop was filled with people, and the constable seized the master and man, and all his servants.
The first ill consequence of this fray was, that the woman who was really the thief made off, and got clear away in the crowd, and two others that they had stopped also; whether they were really guilty or not, that I can say nothing to.
By this time some of his neighbours having come in, and seeing how things went, had endeavoured to bring the mercer to his senses, and he began to be convinced that he was in the wrong; and so at length we went all very quietly before the justice, with a mob of about five hundred people at our heels; and all the way we went I could hear the people ask what was the matter, and others reply and say, a mercer had stopped a gentlewoman instead of a thief, and had afterwards taken the thief, and now the gentlewoman had taken the mercer, and was carrying him before the justice. This pleased the people strangely, and made the crowd increase, and they cried out as they went, 'Which is the rogue? which is the mercer?' and especially the women. Then when they saw him they cried out, 'That's he, that's he'; and every now and then came a good dab of dirt at him; and thus we marched a good while, till the mercer thought fit to desire the constable to call a coach to protect himself from the rabble; so we rode the rest of the way, the constable and I, and the mercer and his man.
When we came to the justice, which was an ancient gentleman in Bloomsbury, the constable giving first a summary account of the matter, the justice bade me speak, and tell what I had to say. And first he asked my name, which I was very loth to give, but there was no remedy; so I told him my name was Mary Flanders, that I was a widow, my husband being a sea-captain, died on a voyage to Virginia; and some other circumstances I told which he could never contradict, and that I lodged at present in town, with such a person, naming my governess; but that I was preparing to go over to America, where my husband's effects lay, and that I was going that day to buy some clothes to put myself into second mourning, but had not yet been in any shop, when that fellow, pointing to the mercer's journeyman, came rushing upon me with such fury as very much frighted me, and carried me back to his master's shop, where, though his master acknowledged I was not the person, yet he would not dismiss me, but charged a constable with me.
Then I proceeded to tell how the journeymen treated me; how they would not suffer me to send for any of my friends; how afterwards they found the real thief, and took the goods they had lost upon her, and all the particulars as before.
Then the constable related his case; his dialogue with the mercer about discharging me, and at last his servant's refusing to go with him, when I had charged him with him, and his master encouraging him to do so, and at last his striking the constable, and the like, all as I have told it already.
