Business ran over into the next day, when one of the suspects in the affair of the Liberty Pole, whether or not the poet is not recorded, was made to apologize. Again the assembly, in committee of the whole and “attended by music,” waited upon Otis, who was lodged at the house of Mr. Davis. Adjured in writing not to sit in the king’s council, but rather as a “constitutional councillor of this province” in the elected General Court at Salem, in writing he expressed gratitude “for putting me in mind of my duty; I am determined to attend at Salem in case my health permits.” To the reading of his message listened “the whole body with heads uncovered and then gave three cheers in token of their satisfaction and high appreciation of his answer as well as esteem and veneration for his person and character.” In final session the company again repudiated the hated acts of Parliament and pledged themselves to the sacred cause of liberty, registered their abhorrence of mobs and violence, warned off any other molesters of the Liberty Pole, and agreed to use their “endeavors to suppress common peddlers.” The last a matter of some mystery until one knows that peddlers were prone to sell tea, and were perhaps suspected of being spies. Barnstable had entertained the host gratis, and the hottest patriot there must have welcomed its withdrawal to Sandwich, where it proceeded to take like action against Tories and possible meddlers with the town’s Liberty Pole. Then, amid cheers for everybody, Doctor Freeman’s company broke up and sifted back to their homes, but he himself was not to come scathless out of his adventure. Suspecting a ruse when, a few nights later, he was summoned to a dying patient, he was not to be disappointed: for as he passed the tavern, three of the “recanters” appeared as a “Committee of the Body of the People” and demanded his presence within to answer for his actions. Ignoring them, he walked on, but on his return he was set upon by the “Committee,” it is said, and crying out that his sword-cane was his only weapon he laid about him valiantly, but was knocked senseless, and would have been in hard case had he not been rescued by friends. The whole community, it seemed, was against such lawlessness. The so-called Tories who had not fled were arrested, and on the plea of Freeman got off with a fine of one hundred pounds “lawful money.” But the people showed no such clemency. Sandwich, after an indignation meeting of the citizens, rearrested the culprits and forced them, on a scaffold under the Liberty Pole, to sign a confession acknowledging that their conduct was such as “would disgrace the character of a ruffian or a Hottentot,” and engaging themselves in future “religiously to regard the laws of God and man.”