“It is no more honest,” he wrote, “for us to withdraw in this case than for men to come to an ordinary [tavern] and to call for the best wine and liquors, the best meats, roast and baked, the best attendance, etc., and to be able to pay for all and yet most unworthily steal away and not discharge the reckoning.” Then changing his figure of speech, he continued: “Shall we say we are Christians ... to ride securely in a troublous sea and time by a new cable and anchor of Mr. Clarke’s procuring, and be so far from satisfying his engagement about them, that we turn him adrift to languish and sink, with his back broke for putting under his shoulder to ease us?” The letter quickened the colony to further action. The mortgaged home was saved, but, unfortunately, the debt was never paid in full. There were boundary disputes during these years, both among the colonists themselves and with outsiders. In Providence, troubles arose from the Indian grants made so many years before. Mr. Harris, Roger Williams’ old enemy, and others interpreted the language of the Indian deed to mean that Canonicus and Miantonomo had really given away several hundred thousand acres of land that had never been taken possession of by the colonists. To-day, if a pretended claim of a similar nature should come up, we would very likely call it a case of clear “graft.” Roger Williams, ever on the defensive when the Indians were concerned, declared stoutly that the chiefs had meant nothing of the kind. And, indeed, what man was better informed on this subject than Roger Williams himself? Had he not dealt directly with the Narragansett sachems? Had he not talked with them in their own tongue? He so persistently blocked and delayed every measure to appropriate the territory in question that the matter was never carried to a successful finish. Still the short-sighted grumblers called his whole-hearted interest “meddling.” With saddened heart, he recorded their taunts: “But some cried out, when Roger Williams had laid himself down as a stone in the dust, for after-comers to step on in town and colony, ‘What is Roger Williams? We know the Indians and the sachems as well as he. We will trust Roger Williams no longer. We will have our bounds confirmed us under the sachems’ hands before us.’” The details of the other boundary quarrels make dry, difficult reading in these days. They are interesting only as they bring out the character of Roger Williams and the part he played in trying to adjust them. The disputed land was principally the Narragansett country, or the southern half of the present state of Rhode Island. Massachusetts claimed territory here, so did Plymouth, and, added to their encroachments, were those of Connecticut. If the land had been divided up as they all wished, little enough would have been left of tiny Rhode Island to form a respectable state afterwards!