"Ay, there's sound sense in that, Francis," replied Lois yielding admiringly to the superior wisdom of her betrothed, but Helen Billington nodding and blinking, muttered to her boy John, as she leaned upon his shoulder,—
"Wait but till dark, when all the wiseacres are asleep, and see if thy daddy sets not these men free, ay, and puts weapons in their hands like enough, to revenge themselves withal."
The offenders bound, and laid each upon his side on the bare ground, the court withdrew and the crowd dispersed. But scarce an hour had passed ere Hopkins presented himself before the governor and his assistant, at work over the colony's records, those precious first minutes, now forever lost, and with an elaborately quiet and restrained demeanor said,—
"Master Bradford, yon poor knaves of mine are suffering shrewdly from cramps and shooting pains as well as from the ache of their scarce healed wounds. They promise in sad sincerity to amend their ways, and when all is said, they are good and kindly lads, and did but ape the fashions of their betters in the Old World. May not I persuade your worship to look over their offense for this time, and to remit their pains and penalties as soon as may be?"
"Thou sayest they are penitent, good Master Hopkins?" asked Bradford judicially.
"Ay, and to my mind honestly so."
"We will speak with them, Master Allerton, and if the captain and the elder agree with me, Master Hopkins, thy petition is granted, for indeed it is to me more pain to make another suffer than to suffer myself, even as a father feels the rod upon his own heart the while he lays it on his son's back."
"And yet the warning that to spare the rod will spoil the child applies to the children of the State as well as to the household," remarked Allerton, whose lively son Bartholomew could have testified to his father's strict obedience to Solomon's precept.
The chiefs of the colony were soon reassembled about the grotesque figures of the suffering duelists, and with their approval, the governor having demanded and received ample professions of contrition, and promises of amendment, ordered Billington to release the prisoners, who shamefacedly crept away to their master's house, and thus ended the first and for many years the only duel fought upon New England soil.