But the house in Fleet Street was a refuge as well as a resort, the sanctuary of a hundred rascals, whose misdeeds were not too flagrantly discovered.  For, while Moll always allowed discretion to govern her conduct, while she would risk no present security for a vague promise of advantages to come, her secret influence in Newgate made her more powerful than the hangman and the whole bench of judges.  There was no turnkey who was not her devoted servitor, but it was the clerk of Newgate to whom she and her family were most deeply beholden.  This was one Ralph Briscoe, as pretty a fellow as ever deserted the law for a bull-baiting.  Though wizened and clerkly in appearance, he was of a lofty courage; and Moll was heard to declare that had she not been sworn to celibacy, she would have cast an eye upon the faithful Ralph, who was obedient to her behests whether at Gaol Delivery or Bear Garden.  For her he would pack a jury or get a reprieve; for him she would bait a bull with the fiercest dogs in London.  Why then should she fear the law, when the clerk of Newgate and Gregory the Hangman fought upon her side?

For others the arbiter of life and death, she was only thrice in an unexampled career confronted with the law.  Her first occasion of arrest was so paltry that it brought discredit only on the constable.  This jack-in-office, a very Dogberry, encountered Moll returning down Ludgate Hill from some merry-making, a lanthorn carried pompously before her.  Startled by her attire he questioned her closely, and receiving insult for answer, promptly carried her to the Round House.  The customary garnish made her free or the prison, and next morning a brief interview with the Lord Mayor restored Moll to liberty but not to forgetfulness.

She had yet to wreak her vengeance upon the constable for a monstrous affront, and hearing presently that he had a rich uncle in Shropshire, she killed the old gentleman (in imagination) and made the constable his heir.  Instantly a retainer, in the true garb and accent of the country, carried the news to Dogberry, and sent him off to Ludlow on the costliest of fool’s errands.  He purchased a horse and set forth joyously, as became a man of property; he limped home, broken in purse and spirit, the hapless object of ridicule and contempt.  Perhaps he guessed the author of this sprightly outrage; but Moll, for her part, was far too finished a humorist to reveal the truth, and hereafter she was content to swell the jesting chorus.

Her second encounter with justice was no mere pleasantry, and it was only her marvellous generalship that snatched her career from untimely ruin and herself from the clutch of Master Gregory.  Two of her emissaries had encountered a farmer in Chancery Lane.  They spoke with him first at Smithfield, and knew that his pocket was well lined with bank-notes.  An improvised quarrel at a tavern-door threw the farmer off his guard, and though he defended the money, his