t to the sty and listen to the grunting of the pigs until I get back to
myself." {49}

Of Isopel's history we know extremely little, save what she herself tells
us. Her father was an officer who was killed in a naval action before he
could fulfil the promise of marriage he had made to her mother, a small
milliner, who died in the workhouse at Long Melford within three months
of the effort of giving birth to an amazon so large and so fierce and so
well able to take her own part as Isopel. At fourteen this fine specimen
of workhouse upbringing was placed in service, from which she emancipated
herself by knocking down her mistress. After two years more at the
"large house" she was once more apprenticed; and this time knocked down
her master in return for an affront. A second return to the workhouse
appearing inadvisable, she traversed the highways of England in various
capacities, and became acquainted with some of those remarkable though
obscure characters who travelled the roads of our country at that period.
A sense of loneliness drove her among unworthy travelling companions,
such as the flying tinker and grey Moll, in whose society she breaks upon
our notice. Some of the vagrants with whom she came into contact had
occasionally attempted to lay violent hands upon her person and effects,
but had been invariably humbled by her without the aid of either justice
or constable.

Of her specific exploits as a bruiser we hear of at least two near Dover.
Once, the cart she and her old mistress travelled with was stopped by two
sailors, who would have robbed and stripped the owners. "Let me get
down," she exclaimed simply, and so saying she got down, and fought with
them both until they turned round and ran away. On another occasion,
while combing out her long hair beneath a hedge, she was insulted by a
jockey. Starting up, though her hair was unbound, she promptly gave him
what he characterised as "a most confounded whopping," and "the only
drubbing I ever had in my life; and lor, how with her right hand she
fibbed me while she held me round the neck with her left arm! I was soon
glad to beg her pardon on my knees, which she gave me in a moment when
she saw me in that condition, being the most placable creature in the
world, and not only her pardon but one of the hairs which I longed for,
which I put through a shilling for purposes of pleasant deception at
country fairs." The hair with the shilling attached to it eve