Then indeed, he stood silent again, like one struck dumb, and after a while he starts up.  ‘Unhappy couple!’ says he.  ’How can this be possible?’ I took him by the hand.  ’Come, my dear,’ said I, ’sit down, and let us compare our sorrows.  I am a prisoner in this very house, and in much worse circumstances than you, and you will be satisfied I do not come to insult you, when I tell you the particulars.’  Any with this we sat down together, and I told him so much of my story as I thought was convenient, bringing it at last to my being reduced to great poverty, and representing myself as fallen into some company that led me to relieve my distresses by way that I had been utterly unacquainted with, and that they making an attempt at a tradesman’s house, I was seized upon for having been but just at the door, the maid-servant pulling me in; that I neither had broke any lock nor taken anything away, and that notwithstanding that, I was brought in guilty and sentenced to die; but that the judges, having been made sensible of the hardship of my circumstances, had obtained leave to remit the sentence upon my consenting to be transported.

I told him I fared the worse for being taken in the prison for one Moll Flanders, who was a famous successful thief, that all of them had heard of, but none of them had ever seen; but that, as he knew well, was none of my name.  But I placed all to the account of my ill fortune, and that under this name I was dealt with as an old offender, though this was the first thing they had ever known of me.  I gave him a long particular of things that had befallen me since I saw him, but I told him if I had seen him since he might think I had, and then gave him an account how I had seen him at Brickhill; how furiously he was pursued, and how, by giving an account that I knew him, and that he was a very honest gentleman, one Mr. ——­, the hue-and-cry was stopped, and the high constable went back again.

He listened most attentively to all my story, and smiled at most of the particulars, being all of them petty matters, and infinitely below what he had been at the head of; but when I came to the story of Brickhill, he was surprised.  ’And was it you, my dear,’ said he, ’that gave the check to the mob that was at our heels there, at Brickhill?’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ’it was I indeed.’  And then I told him the particulars which I had observed him there.  ‘Why, then,’ said he, ’it was you that saved my life at that time, and I am glad I owe my life to you, for I will pay the debt to you now, and I’ll deliver you from the present condition you are in, or I will die in the attempt.’

I told him, by no means; it was a risk too great, not worth his running the hazard of, and for a life not worth his saving.  ’Twas no matter for that, he said, it was a life worth all the world to him; a life that had given him a new life; ‘for,’ says he, ’I was never in real danger of being taken, but that time, till the last minute when I was taken.’  Indeed, he told me his danger then lay in his believing he had not been pursued that way; for they had gone from Hockey quite another way, and had come over the enclosed country into Brickhill, not by the road, and were sure they had not been seen by anybody.