en Charles came to
London in 1638; and it was her amiable pleasantry to give the name of
Strafford to a clever, cunning bull, and to dub the dogs that assailed
him Pym, Hampden, and the rest, that right heartily she might applaud
the courage of Strafford as he threw off his unwary assailants.

So long as the quarrel lasted, she was compelled to follow a profession
more ancient than the fence's; for there is one passion which war itself
cannot extinguish. When once the King had laid his head 'down as upon a
bed,' when once the Protector had proclaimed his supremacy, the industry
of the road revived; and there was not a single diver or rumpad that
did not declare eternal war upon the black-hearted Regicides. With
a laudable devotion to her chosen cause, Moll despatched the most
experienced of her gang to rob Lady Fairfax on her way to church; and
there is a tradition that the Roaring Girl, hearing that Fairfax himself
would pass by Hounslow, rode forth to meet him, and with her own voice
bade him stand and deliver. One would like to believe it; yet it is
scarce credible. If Fairfax had spent the balance of an ignominious
career in being plundered by a band of loyal brigands, he would not
have had time to justify the innumerable legends of pockets emptied
and pistols levelled at his head. Moreover, Moll herself was laden
with years, and she had always preferred the council chamber to the
battlefield. But it is certain that, with Captain Hind and Mull Sack to
aid, she schemed many a clever plot against the Roundheads, and nobly
she played her part in avenging the martyred King.

Thus she declined into old age, attended, like Queen Mary, by her maids,
who would card, reel, spin, and beguile her leisure with sweet singing.
Though her spirit was untamed, the burden of her years compelled her to
a tranquil life. She, who formerly never missed a bull-baiting, must now
content herself with tick-tack. Her fortune, moreover, had been wrecked
in the Civil War. Though silver shells still jingled in her pocket, time
was she knew the rattle of the yellow boys. But she never lost courage,
and died at last of a dropsy, in placid contentment with her lot.
Assuredly she was born at a time well suited to her genius. Had she
lived to-day, she might have been a 'Pioneer'; she might even have
discussed some paltry problem of sex in a printed obscenity.

In her own freer, wiser age, she was not man's detractor, but his rival;
and if she never