claim him. Accordingly
they placed him with a sawyer, by Fleet Ditch, which at his first coming
to the business seemed to him to be a much lighter work than that he had
endured in the space of his being at sea. He served four years honestly,
indeed, and with as much content as a person of his unsettled mind could
enjoy in any state; but at the end of that space, good usage had so far
spoiled him that he longed to be at liberty again, though at the expense
of another sea voyage. Accordingly, leaving his master, he went away
again on board of a merchantman bound for the Straits. During the time
which the ship lay in port for her loading, he contracted some distemper
from the heat of the country, and his immoderate love of its wine and
the fruits that grow there. These brought him very low, and he falling
at the same time into company of some bad women, made an addition to his
former ails by adding one of the worst and most painful of all
distempers to the miseries he before endured.

In this miserable condition, more like a ghost than a man, he shipped
himself at last for England in a vessel, the captain of which out of
charity gave him his passage home. The air of that climate in which he
was born, recovered him to a miracle. Soon after which being, I suppose,
cured also of those maladies which had attended the Spanish women's
favours, he fell in love with a very honest industrious young woman, and
quickly prevailed with her to marry him. But her friends discovering
what a profligate life he led, resolved she should not share in the
misfortunes such a measure would be sure to draw upon him, wherefore
they took her away from him. How crabbed soever this malefactor might be
towards others, yet so affectionately fond was he of his wife that the
taking of her away made him not only uneasy and melancholy, but drove
him also into distraction. To relieve his grief, at first he betook
himself to those companies that afterwards led him to the courses which
brought on his death, and in almost all the villainies he committed
afterwards he was hardly ever sober, so much did the loss of his wife,
and the remorse of his course of the life he led affect him, whenever he
allowed himself coolly to reflect thereon.

The crew he had engaged himself in were the most notorious and the most
cruel footpads which for many years had infested the road. The robberies
they committed were numerous and continual, and the manner in which they
perpetr