Hill from some merry-making, a lanthorn carried pompously before her.
Startled by her attire he questioned her closely, and receiving insult
for answer, promptly carried her to the Round House. The customary
garnish made her free or the prison, and next morning a brief interview
with the Lord Mayor restored Moll to liberty but not to forgetfulness.

She had yet to wreak her vengeance upon the constable for a monstrous
affront, and hearing presently that he had a rich uncle in Shropshire,
she killed the old gentleman (in imagination) and made the constable his
heir. Instantly a retainer, in the true garb and accent of the country,
carried the news to Dogberry, and sent him off to Ludlow on the
costliest of fool's errands. He purchased a horse and set forth
joyously, as became a man of property; he limped home, broken in purse
and spirit, the hapless object of ridicule and contempt. Perhaps he
guessed the author of this sprightly outrage; but Moll, for her part,
was far too finished a humorist to reveal the truth, and hereafter she
was content to swell the jesting chorus.

Her second encounter with justice was no mere pleasantry, and it was
only her marvellous generalship that snatched her career from untimely
ruin and herself from the clutch of Master Gregory. Two of her
emissaries had encountered a farmer in Chancery Lane. They spoke with
him first at Smithfield, and knew that his pocket was well lined with
bank-notes. An improvised quarrel at a tavern-door threw the farmer off
his guard, and though he defended the money, his watch was snatched from
his fob and duly carried to Moll. The next day the victim, anxious to
repurchase his watch, repaired to Fleet Street, where Moll generously
promised to recover the stolen property. Unhappily security had
encouraged recklessness, and as the farmer turned to leave he espied
his own watch hanging among other trinkets upon the wall. With a rare
discretion he held his peace until he had called a constable to his aid,
and this time the Roaring Girl was lodged in Newgate, with an ugly crime
laid to her charge.

Committed for trial, she demanded that the watch should be left in the
constable's keeping, and, pleading not guilty when the sessions came
round, insisted that her watch and the farmer's were not the same. The
farmer, anxious to acknowledge his property, demanded the constable to
deliver the watch, that it might be sworn to in open court; and when the
constable put his