I made another adventure or two, but they were but trifles too, though
sufficient to live on. After this nothing considerable offering for a
good while, I began to think that I must give over the trade in
earnest; but my governess, who was not willing to lose me, and expected
great things of me, brought me one day into company with a young woman
and a fellow that went for her husband, though as it appeared
afterwards, she was not his wife, but they were partners, it seems, in
the trade they carried on, and partners in something else. In short,
they robbed together, lay together, were taken together, and at last
were hanged together.
I came into a kind of league with these two by the help of my
governess, and they carried me out into three or four adventures, where
I rather saw them commit some coarse and unhandy robberies, in which
nothing but a great stock of impudence on their side, and gross
negligence on the people's side who were robbed, could have made them
successful. So I resolved from that time forward to be very cautious
how I adventured upon anything with them; and indeed, when two or three
unlucky projects were proposed by them, I declined the offer, and
persuaded them against it. One time they particularly proposed robbing
a watchmaker of three gold watches, which they had eyed in the daytime,
and found the place where he laid them. One of them had so many keys
of all kinds, that he made no question to open the place where the
watchmaker had laid them; and so we made a kind of an appointment; but
when I came to look narrowly into the thing, I found they proposed
breaking open the house, and this, as a thing out of my way, I would
not embark in, so they went without me. They did get into the house by
main force, and broke up the locked place where the watches were, but
found but one of the gold watches, and a silver one, which they took,
and got out of the house again very clear. But the family, being
alarmed, cried out 'Thieves,' and the man was pursued and taken; the
young woman had got off too, but unhappily was stopped at a distance,
and the watches found upon her. And thus I had a second escape, for
they were convicted, and both hanged, being old offenders, though but
young people. As I said before that they robbed together and lay
together, so now they hanged together, and there ended my new
partnership.