[The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett]@TWC D-Link bookThe Adventures of Roderick Random CHAPTER XV 2/9
There's all I have in the world, take it, and I'll perhaps get more for you before that be done.
If not, I'll beg for you, steal for you, go through the wide world with you, and stay with you; for though I be a poor cobbler's son, I am no scout." I was so much touched with the generous passion of this poor creature, that I could not refrain from weeping also, and we mingled our tears together for some time.
Upon examining the purse, I found in it two half-guineas and half-a-crown, which I would have returned to him, saying, he knew better than I how to manage it, but he, absolutely refused my proposal and told me it was more reasonable and decent that he should depend upon me, who was a gentleman, than that I should be controlled by him. After this friendly contest was over, and our minds more at ease, we informed our landlord of what had happened to us, taking care to conceal the extremity to which we were reduced.
He no sooner heard the story, than he assured us we had been grievously imposed upon by a couple of sharpers, who were associates; and that this polite, honest, friendly, humane person, who had treated us so civilly, was no other than a rascally money-dropper, we made it his business to decoy strangers in that manner to one of his own haunts, where an accomplice or two were always waiting to assist in pillaging the prey he had run down.
Here the good man recounted a great many stories of people who has been seduced, cheated, pilfered, beat--nay, even murdered by such villains.
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