death was in fact one cause of the subsequent Pequot war. Now as to Mr. Lyford. His time having expired, his sentence was to be carried out. He was so far from fulfilling their hopes of amendment, that he had doubled his offence, as shown. But behold the hand of God upon him, wherein the Psalmist is verified (Psa. vii, 15): He hath made a pit and digged it, and is fallen into the pit he made. He thought to bring disgrace upon them but instead he discloses his own shame to all the world. When he was confronted with his second letter, his wife was so stirred by his doings that she could no longer conceal her grief, and opened her mind to one of the deacons and some of her friends, and later to Mr. Pierce, on his arrival. She said that she feared some great judgment of God would fall upon the family, because of her husband; and now that they were about to remove she feared she would fall into the Indians’ hands and be defiled by them as he had defiled other women, recalling God’s threatened judgment upon David (II Sam. xii, 11): I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour. Then she disclosed how he had wronged her, and that he had a bastard by another woman before they were married. She had had some inkling of it when he was courting her, and told him what she had heard rumoured; but he not only stiffly denied it, but to satisfy her took a solemn oath; so she consented to marry him. Afterwards she found it was true, and reminded him of his oath; but he prayed her to pardon him, and pleaded that otherwise he would not have won her. And yet even after this she could keep no maid-servant but he would be meddling with them, and sometimes she had taken him in the act. The woman was a respectable matron, of good behaviour all the while she was here, and spoke out of the sorrow of her heart, sparingly, but circumstantially. What seemed to affect her most was his easy repentances, followed by a speedy return to the old paths.