of
them, who, I confess, did not look like a thief--'Indeed,' says she,
'we are wrong, but we were told they were goods that had no owner.
Be pleased to take them again; and look yonder, there are more such
customers as we.' She cried and looked pitifully, so I took the hats
from her and opened the gate, and bade them be gone, for I pitied the
women indeed; but when I looked towards the warehouse, as she directed,
there were six or seven more, all women, fitting themselves with hats as
unconcerned and quiet as if they had been at a hatter's shop buying for
their money.

I was surprised, not at the sight of so many thieves only, but at the
circumstances I was in; being now to thrust myself in among so many
people, who for some weeks had been so shy of myself that if I met
anybody in the street I would cross the way from them.

They were equally surprised, though on another account. They all told me
they were neighbours, that they had heard anyone might take them, that
they were nobody's goods, and the like. I talked big to them at first,
went back to the gate and took out the key, so that they were all my
prisoners, threatened to lock them all into the warehouse, and go and
fetch my Lord Mayor's officers for them.

They begged heartily, protested they found the gate open, and the
warehouse door open; and that it had no doubt been broken open by some
who expected to find goods of greater value: which indeed was reasonable
to believe, because the lock was broke, and a padlock that hung to the
door on the outside also loose, and not abundance of the hats carried
away.

At length I considered that this was not a time to be cruel and
rigorous; and besides that, it would necessarily oblige me to go much
about, to have several people come to me, and I go to several whose
circumstances of health I knew nothing of; and that even at this time
the plague was so high as that there died 4000 a week; so that in
showing my resentment, or even in seeking justice for my brother's
goods, I might lose my own life; so I contented myself with taking the
names and places where some of them lived, who were really inhabitants
in the neighbourhood, and threatening that my brother should call them
to an account for it when he returned to his habitation.

Then I talked a little upon another foot with them, and asked them how
they could do such things as these in a time of such general calamity,
and, as it were, in the face of God's most dre