And now as I jogged home with all this gold chinking in my pockets, I did feel that I had thrust my head fairly into a halter, and no chance left of drawing it out.  Look at it how I might, this business wore a most curst aspect, to be sure; nor could I regard myself as anything but a thoroughpaced rogue.

“For,” thinks I, “if old Simon’s prayer be answered, what will become of this poor Mr. Goodman?  His title deeds will be wrested from him, for they are but stolen goods he is paying for, and thus an innocent, honest man will be utterly ruined.  And for doing this villany I may count myself lucky if my heels save my neck.”

With this weight on my mind, I resolved to be very watchful and careful of my safety, and before I fell asleep that night I had devised a dozen schemes for making good my escape as soon as I perceived danger; nevertheless, I could dream of nothing but prisons, scourgings, etc., and in every vision I perceived old Simon in his leather skull-cap sitting on the top of Tyburn tree, with his handkercher a-hanging down ready to strangle me.

CHAPTER XXV.

A table of various accidents.

As your guide, showing you an exhibition of paintings, will linger over the first room, and then pass the second in hurried review to come the quicker to a third of greater interest, so I, having dwelt, may be, at undue length upon some secondary passages in this history, must economise my space by touching lightly on the events that came immediately before Moll’s marriage, and so get to those more moving accidents which followed.  Here, therefore, will I transcribe certain notes (forming a brief chronicle) from that secret journal which, for the clearer understanding of my position, I began to keep the day I took possession of Simon’s lodge and entered upon my new office.

December 8. Very busy all this forenoon setting my new house in order, conveying, with the help of the gardener, all those domestic and personal goods that belong to Simon into the attick; but Lord! so few these things, and they so patched and worn, that altogether they are not worth ten shillings of anybody’s money.  I find the house wondrous neat and clean in every part, but so comfortless and prison-like, that I look forward with little relish to living here when the time comes for me to leave the Court.  After this to examining books, papers, etc., and the more closely I look into these, the more assured I am that never was any servant more scrupulous, exact, and honest in his master’s service than this old steward, which puts me to the hope that I may be only half as faithful to my trust as he, but I do fear I shall not.