The Adventures of Roderick Random

Narrator’s Rising Household Standing

Notes the narrator’s improved standing in the Lavement household. After learning the family’s private secrets, the narrator’s daily life becomes far more pleasant. As he gains more familiarity with London society and polishes his manners, he sheds his earlier awkwardness and earns a reputation as a polite, capable journeyman apothecary.

第二十章

The chapter recounts a sequence of events: an assault and dangerous wounding, suspicion falling upon O’Donnell, confirmation of his guilt, a scheme of revenge, O’Donnell’s subsequent disgrace and disappearance, the discovery of an empty trunk, Strap’s departure, a courtship with a lady, and the miraculous delivery from a matrimonial trap.

The Assault

One night at about twelve o’clock, while returning from visiting a patient at Chelsea, the narrator received a blow on the head from an unseen hand that stretched him senseless on the ground. He was left for dead with three sword stabs in his body. When he recovered, the groans he uttered alarmed the people of a solitary alehouse nearby, who took him in and summoned a surgeon. The surgeon dressed his wounds and assured him they were not mortal. One wound penetrated through the skin and muscles of one side of his belly, another slanted along one of his ribs, and the third, directed to his heart, snapped upon his breastbone with the point remaining sticking in the skin.

Suspecting O’Donnell

Upon reflection, the narrator could not believe he had been assaulted by a common footpad, since such people typically murder only when they meet resistance, and he found his money safe. He concluded he must have been either mistaken for another or attacked by a private enemy. Remembering no one with cause for complaint except Captain O’Donnell and his master’s daughter, his suspicion settled upon them, though he concealed his suspicions to sooner arrive at confirmation.