the greatest
advantage possible to him, for the young woman being in herself both
virtuous and industrious, her temper (as it is natural for us to imitate
what we love) made so great an impression upon Marple that from a wild,
loose and extravagant young man, he became a sober, diligent and honest
workman, labouring hard to get his bread, and living at home with his
wife in the greatest tranquility and with the utmost satisfaction. But
the agreeable beauty of this scene was soon darkened, or rather totally
destroyed, by the death of his wife; for no sooner were the transports
of his melancholy over than he returned to his old course of life. And
in order to efface effectually that grief which still hung over him, he
removed out of town to an adjacent village, where he quickly contracted
an intimate acquaintance with a young woman, and thereby almost at once
put all thoughts of sorrow and honesty quite out of his head. This
creature was of a very different disposition from Marple's late wife.
She had no regard for the man, farther than she was able to get money
out of him; and provided she had wherewith to buy her fine clothes and
keep her in handsome lodgings, she gave herself no trouble how he came
by it, and this carriage of hers in a short time put him upon illegal
methods of obtaining money.

Who were his first companions in his robberies is not in my power to
say; it was generally looked upon that one Rouden seduced him, but
Marple declared this to be false, and perhaps the best account that can
be given is that he was led to it by his own evil inclinations, and his
necessities in which they had brought him. However it were, during the
time he practised going upon the road nobody committed more robberies
than he himself did, preying alike upon all sorts of people, and taking
from the poor what little they had, as well as plundering the rich of
what they could much better spare.

In Marylebone Fields he and his companion Cotton met with a poor woman
with a basket on her head, who gained her livelihood by selling joints
of meat to gentlemen's families. The first thing they did was to search
her basket, in which there was a fine leg of mutton, which these
gentlemen thought fit to dress and eat next day for dinner. They then
commanded her to deliver her money, which she declared was a thing out
of her power, because she had none about her; upon which they took her
pocket and turned it out, where finding seven shilling