Dutton's party, including the three boys, stayed at Beaver Falls the better part of that day, waiting to see if any more Yorkers would put in an appearance. But no more came, and that afternoon, leaving a sufficient number to guard the village, they set out with their prisoners for Bennington. They spent the night at another small settlement, where the people were only too glad to give them shelter when they learned what the band had done. Next day they reached Bennington, and turned their prisoners over to the sheriff there, to be dealt with as the officers should think fit. In Bennington, which was a very primitive town, but the center of that part of the country, Jack and Sam heard much about the border strife. They heard that the governor of New York had offered rewards for the capture of certain Green Mountain Boys, one hundred pounds apiece for the arrest of Ethan Allen and Remember Baker, fifty pounds apiece for Seth Warner and five others. The governor also ordered that any people who should resist the commands of New York officers should be arrested and taken to Albany for trial. All of "Big Bill's" party, Jack and Sam among them, were therefore now liable to be arrested by New York officers. The people of Bennington and the Green Mountain Boys, however, only laughed at these proclamations of the New York governor. They were quite ready to defend themselves if any came to arrest them. While they were at Bennington Ethan Allen and the others who had been declared outlaws issued a proclamation of their own. They said, "We are under the necessity of resisting even unto blood every person who may attempt to take us as felons or rioters as aforesaid, for in this case it is not resisting law, but only opposing force by force; therefore, inasmuch as, by the oppressions aforesaid, the New Hampshire settlers are reduced to the disagreeable state of anarchy and confusion; in which state we hope for wisdom, patience, and fortitude till the happy hour His Majesty shall graciously be pleased to restore us to the privileges of Englishmen." The boys heard other gossip and rumors from the hunters and traders and farmers who came and went in Bennington. They learned that there was a plan on foot to settle the dispute about the Grants by joining them to that part of the province of New York that lay to the east of the Hudson River, and forming that whole new territory into a separate royal province. Colonel Philip Skene, who lived in state at Skenesborough House on his large estate at the head of Lake Champlain, was reported to be very much interested in this new plan, and was said to be going to England to further it, with a view to becoming the first governor of the new province.