ost a moment's time; but he
was half angry, and thought me too impatient; and then his fatal
confessions, and the detestable artifice of my master!--But one might
well think, that he who had so cunningly, and so wickedly, contrived
all his stratagems hitherto, that it was impossible to avoid them, would
stick at nothing to complete them. I fear I shall soon find it so!

But one stratagem I have just invented, though a very discouraging one
to think of; because I have neither friends nor money, nor know one step
of the way, if I was out of the house. But let bulls, and bears, and
lions, and tigers, and, what is worse, false, treacherous, deceitful
men, stand in my way, I cannot be in more danger than I am; and I depend
nothing upon his three weeks: for how do I know, now he is in such a
passion, and has already begun his vengeance on poor Mr. Williams, that
he will not change his mind, and come down to Lincolnshire before he
goes to London?

My stratagem is this: I will endeavour to get Mrs. Jewkes to go to bed
without me, as she often does, while I sit locked up in my closet: and
as she sleeps very sound in her first sleep, of which she never fails to
give notice by snoring, if I can but then get out between the two bars
of the window, (for you know I am very slender, and I find I can get
my head through,) then I can drop upon the leads underneath, which
are little more than my height, and which leads are over a little
summer-parlour, that juts out towards the garden; and as I am light, I
can easily drop from them; for they are not high from the ground: then I
shall be in the garden; and then, as I have the key of the back-door,
I will get out. But I have another piece of cunning still: Good Heaven,
succeed to me my dangerous, but innocent devices!--I have read of a
great captain, who, being in danger, leaped overboard into the sea,
and his enemies, as he swam, shooting at him with bows and arrows, he
unloosed his upper garment, and took another course, while they stuck
that full of their darts and arrows; and so he escaped, and lived
to triumph over them all. So what will I do, but strip off my upper
petticoat, and throw it into the pond, with my neckhandkerchief! For to
be sure, when they miss me, they will go to the pond first, thinking I
have drowned myself: and so, when they see some of my clothes floating
there, they will be all employed in dragging the pond, which is a very
large one; and as I shall not, perhaps