A few evenings later, when the younger members of the household were in bed, and were supposed to be asleep, Eleazar, who was lying broad awake, overheard a conversation between the Indian chief and his squaw which interested him mightily. The chief was urging compliance with a request which had been made to them to allow two of their children to go away for education; but his wife objected on religious grounds. When he persisted in his demand she said, "If you will do it you may send away this strange boy. Means have been put into your hands for his education; but John I cannot part with." Her willingness to sacrifice him, and the whole tone of the conversation, excited suspicions in the mind of the listener as to his parentage, but they soon passed away. Mrs. Williams at last agreed that John, one of her own children, and Lazar, according to this story, her adopted child, should be sent to Long Meadow, a village in Massachusetts, to be brought up under the care of a deacon called Nathaniel Ely. It is said that when the supposed brothers entered the village, dressed in their Indian costume, the entire dissimilarity in their appearance at once excited attention, and they became the subjects of general conversation among the villagers. At Long Meadow the lads remained for several years, and are represented as having made "remarkably good proficiency in school learning," as exhibiting strong proofs of virtuous and pious dispositions, and as "likely to make useful missionaries among the heathen." This encomium seems, however, to have been much more applicable to Eleazar than his companion; for, after the most persistent attempts, it was found impossible to cultivate the mind of John, whose passion for savage life was irrepressible, and who returned home to live and die among the Indians. With Eleazar it was different, and his biographer proudly records that he was called familiarly "the plausible boy."