Page:History of Moll Flanders (2).pdf/14

 My name was as well known at the Old Bailey, as a remarkable traitor is at the Secretary’s office. But being now an excellent pick-pocket as well as a strumpet, I took from a cull after I had made him drunk, his gold-watch, with his silk purse of gold, fine perriwig, sword and snuffbox; and leaping out of the coach (which stood still to let another coach pass by) I left my fool to mourn his disaster. This success made me follow the whoring again, but finding the profits of it too small to support me, I returned again to my old trade of shop-lifting.

And one time as I was going along the street through Covent Garden, there was a cry of stop thief, stop thief; a mercer’s shop having been robbed, and I secured as the transgressor, and most haughtily insulted by the mercer and his servants. In a little time they got the right thief, who was much in the same habit as mine. But for this affront I got an hundred and fifty pounds: so that all this, with my other substance might have maintained me, but I