Then, jumping down, he exclaimed, "Is not he that sells this soap a cheating villain, to put this bag of lead into it, to make the barrel weigh heavier? However, that he may not succeed in his roguery, I'll take it and sell it in the next house I come to, for it will wet my whistle to the tune of two or three shillings."
So saying, he was making off, when the poor carrier cried out, "Hold, hold, sir! that is not lead. It is a bag with a hundred pounds in it, for which I must be accountable."
"No, no," returned Ovet, "this can't be money; but if it is, tell the owner that I'll be answerable for it, if he'll come to me."
"To you! Where, then, sir, may one find you?"
"Why, truly," rejoined Ovet, with a chuckle, "that's a question soon asked, but not so soon answered. The best answer I can give you is that you'll probably find me in a gaol before night, and then perhaps you may have what I have taken, and forty pounds more."
The highwaymen were generally susceptible creatures, and Ovet not less so than his brethren. One day, robbing the Worcester stage-coach, filled on that occasion with young women, he was violently smitten with one in particular.
"Madam," he declared, "your charms have softened my temper. Cast not your eyes down, nor cover your face with those modest blushes; and, believe me, what I have taken from necessity is only borrowed, and shall be honourably restored, if you will let me know where you may be found."
The young woman gave him her address, and a week later, overcome by the most violent passion, he wrote her a love-letter in which, in the most bombastic and ridiculous style, he expressed his love. "Although I had the cruelty to rob you of twenty guineas," he concluded, "you committed at the same time a greater robbery, by taking my heart. Do, I implore you, direct a favourable answer."
But this was the discouraging reply:
"Sir,—
"Yours I received with as great dissatisfaction as when you robbed me. I admire your impudence in offering yourself to me as a husband, when I am sensible it would not be long ere you made me a hempen widow. Perhaps some foolish girl or another may be so bewitched as to go in white, to beg the favour of marrying you under the gallows; but, indeed, I shall neither venture there, nor in a church, to marry one of your profession, whose vows are treacherous, and whose smiles, words, and actions, like small rivulets, through a thousand turnings of loose passions, at last arrive at the dead sea of sin.
"Should you, therefore, dissolve your eyes into tears; were every accent in your speech a sigh; had you all the spells and magic charms of love, I should seal up my ears. You have already broken your word, in not sending what you villainously took from me; but, not valuing that, let me tell you, for fear you should have too great a conceit of yourself, that you are the first, to my recollection, whom I ever hated; and, sealing my hatred with the hopes of quickly reading your dying speech, in case you die in London, I presume to subscribe myself."
"Yours, never to command."