nt he had given, but at length, after much persuasion,
she again acknowledged he was in the right, and promised to do as he
would have her. Things being thus adjusted, nothing remained for him to
do but to get ready for his journey, and that his mate might be the less
timorous of the event, he told her he had procured another supply of
twenty-five guineas.

His cloak-bag was soon stored with such medicines as he thought proper,
and having packed up a few practical books he thought he might have
occasion for, he took a place for himself and Jenny, who passed for his
wife, in the stage coach for Huntingdon, at a village near which, paying
the people for a month's board, he left his consort, and having hired
horses to Boston, he took a young fellow from Huntingdon with him
thither.

As Benson had a very smooth tongue, so he set off the wonderful
properties of his drugs in so artful a manner that in the space of a
fortnight he had cleared L10 besides his expenses. As he had left Jenny
five guineas in her pocket, he wrote to her to pay the people another
month's board, and assured her that he would return within that space.
Hiring accordingly visited Sleaford, and some other great towns
thereabouts, in seven weeks' time he set out for his return into
Huntingdonshire, with fifty guineas, all clear gain, in his pockets.
This good luck encouraged him to run through the greatest part of the
North of England in the same manner, and within the compass of three
years he cleared upwards of L500. At the time of his making this
calculation he was set down at Bristol, in order to exercise his talent
in that great city; but an unexpected accident broke all his measures.
Just as his stage was set up, and he mounted, and opening his harangue
which was now become familiar to him, a constable stepped up upon the
stage, and told him that a gentleman had sworn a robbery directly
against him, and he must go immediately before the mayor. This put him
into a lamentable confusion. He knew himself innocent, but the character
of a mountebank was sufficient to make the thing believed at first, and
therefore he could not be blamed for his apprehensions, especially
considering he took it as a just return for that robbery which he had
committed in town, and for which he made no satisfaction when it was so
fully in his power.

Upon his prosecutor's appearing before the mayor, and swearing flatly to
his face as to his robbing him of seven guineas, a s