THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF MOLL FLANDERS
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brocaded silk, value £46, the goods of Anthony Johnson, and for breaking open the doors; whereas I knew very well they could not pretend I had broken up the doors, or so much as lifted up a latch.
On the Friday I was brought to my trial. I had so exhausted my spirits with crying for two or three days before, that I slept better the Thursday night than I expected, and had more courage for my trial than I thought possible for me to have.
When the trial began, and the indictment was read, I would have spoke, but they told me the witnesses must be heard first, and then I should have time to be heard. The witnesses were the two wenches, a couple of hard-mouthed jades indeed, for though the thing was truth in the main, yet they aggravated it to the utmost extremity, and swore I had the goods wholly in my possession, that I hid them among my clothes, that I was going off with them, that I had one foot over the threshold when they discovered themselves, and then I put t'other over, so that I was quite out of the house in the street with the goods before they took me, and then they seized me, and took the goods upon me. The fact in general was true, but I insisted upon it, that they stopped me before I had set my foot clear of the threshold. But that did not argue much, for I had taken the goods, and was bringing them away, if I had not been taken.
I pleaded that I had stole nothing, they had lost nothing, that the door was open, and I went in with design to buy. If, seeing nobody in the house, I had taken any of them up in my hand, it could not be concluded that I intended to steal them, for that I never carried them farther than the door, to look on them with the better light.
The Court would not allow that by any means, and made a kind of a jest of my intending to buy the goods, that being no shop for the selling of anything; and as to carrying them to the door to look at them, the maids made their impudent mocks upon that, and spent their wit upon it very much; told the Court I had looked at them sufficiently, and approved them very well, for I had packed them up, and was a-going with them.
In short, I was found guilty of felony, but acquitted of the burglary, which was but small comfort to me, the first bringing me to a sentence of death, and the last would have done no more. The next day I was carried down to receive the dreadful sentence, and when they came to ask me what I had to say why sentence should not pass, I stood mute a while, but some body prompted me aloud to speak to the judges, for that they could represent things favourably for me. This encouraged me, and I told them I had nothing to say to stop the sentence, but that I had much to say to bespeak the mercy of the Court; that I hoped they would allow something in such a case for the circumstances of it; that I had broken no doors, had carried nothing off; that nobody had lost anything; that the person whose goods they were was pleased to say he desired mercy might be shown (which indeed he very honestly did); that, at the worst, it was the first offence, and that I had never been before any court of justice before; and, in a word, I spoke with more courage than I thought I could have done, and in such a moving tone, and though with tears, yet not so many tears as to obstruct my speech, that I could see it moved others to tears that heard me.
The judges sat grave and mute, gave me an easy hearing, and time to say all that I would, but, saying neither yes or no to it, pronounced the sentence of death upon me, a sentence to me like death itself, which con-
