"Tried to grasp 't other fool's dagger in thy naked hand, eh?" coolly remarked the Captain as he cut a strip of plaster to fit the wound. "Now the next time take my counsel and catch it in the leathern sleeve of thy jerkin. Better wound a dead calf than a live one."
"Next time, sayst he!" commented Dotey in a mock aside to his companion. "So we were not so far astray this time."
"Next time thou meetest a dagger, I should have said," retorted the Captain with his grimmest smile. "I never said ye were not to fight, for I trow ye'll have chance enough at that before I'm done with ye; but when a handful of men are set as we are to garrison a little post on the frontier of a savage country, for one to fall afoul of another and to risk two lives out of a dozen for some senseless feud of their own is to my mind little short of treason to the government they've sworn to defend. Now then, march! Alden, give Dotey thy arm to lean upon if he needs it. Forward!"
That night Dotey and Lister slept in two rooms under guard, and the next morning the freemen of the colony were convened in the Common house to judge their case. With them Billington was also summoned, although neither Dotey nor Lister had betrayed his complicity.
Accused of deliberate assault upon each other with deadly weapons both men humbly pleaded guilty and expressed their penitence, but to this Bradford gravely replied,—
"Glad are we to know that ye are penitent, and resolved upon amendment, but ne'er the less we cannot therefore omit some signal punishment both to make a serious impression upon your own memories, and to advertise to all other evil-doers that we bear not the sword of justice in vain. Brethren, I pray you speak your minds. What ought to be done to these would-be murderers?"
"In the army they would have earned a flogging," remarked the captain sitting at the governor's right hand.
"Perhaps solitary confinement with fasting would subdue the angry heat of their blood most effectually," said the elder at Bradford's other side.
"Had we a pillory or a pair of stocks I would advise that public disgrace," said Winslow; and Allerton suggested,—
"They might be fined for the benefit of the public purse."