The Adventures of Roderick Random

The Highwaymen Pursuit

Strap rides up to the coach in a panic, warning that two men on horseback are approaching on the heath. The coach’s occupants react in terror: Mrs. Snapper screams, Miss Snapper turns pale, the severe gentlewoman clutches her purse, the lawyer’s teeth chatter, and the soldier looks confused. The narrator orders the coach to stop, jumps out, and invites the soldier to join him in defense, but when the soldier hesitates, the narrator takes the soldier’s pistols, gives them to the trembling Strap, mounts his own horse, and faces the two highwaymen alone. The robbers, seeing two armed men ready to fight, ride away. The narrator hires a passing footman to help him pursue the thieves; when the highwaymen fire at them and flee, one thief’s horse stumbles, throwing its rider senseless to the ground, where he is easily captured. The pair secure the thief, who has regained consciousness by this point, and who has the audacity to demand to know by what authority they are treating a gentleman so poorly and threatens them with prosecution for robbery. They soon discover the thief has a stolen £20 canvas bag on his person, identified by a farmer as the proceeds of his robbery of the farmer an hour prior, and turn the thief over to the farmer to take to Hounslow. The narrator returns to the coach, where the soldier and lawyer are attending to the severe gentlewoman, who fainted at the sound of gunfire.

The Prude’s Soliloquy

After the narrator returns to the coach, Miss Snapper and her mother compliment him on his courage, and the lawyer jokes that he is legally entitled to a £40 reward for capturing the highwayman. The embarrassed soldier claims he would have caught the robbers easily if the narrator had not acted rashly, and grows furious when the narrator openly says he saw the soldier tremble during the encounter, threatening violence before being humiliated into silence for the rest of the journey. The severe gentlewoman, having recovered from her faint, delivers a scornful soliloquy criticizing men who risk their lives for small sums of money and women who praise such brutality, and vows she will never ride in a stagecoach again if she can afford private transport. Offended by her remarks, the narrator delivers his own soliloquy, criticizing her unreasonable expectation that strangers would let themselves be robbed to spare her fear, and vows that if she is ever attacked again, he will leave her to fend for herself so she can appreciate the value of his protection.