"The children had a hard time of it in school as well as at home. If they told wrong stories, they had to hold out their tongues to be burnt with a good dose of mustard." Uncle Sam looked quite sad as he went on to tell of a little girl who took something which belonged to a playmate. "Her teacher held her fingers over red-hot coals and burned them." "I don't believe children dared to turn round or whisper in school very often," said Joe. "I should say not. If they did, a sudden rap came upon their heads. It made them wish they had not broken the rules." "I am glad I am alive now, and have such a lovely home, and father and mother, and—" "Uncle Sam," said Joe, ending the sentence for his sister. CHAPTER X ROGER WILLIAMS It was snowing hard outside and the wind howled around the little cottage. Joe and Lucy had been taking supper with Uncle Sam. Lucy had made a big pile of buttered toast and her mother had sent over a plum cake. They were all eaten. "You must go home pretty soon, children. The snow is drifting a good deal and it will be hard walking. It is well that you both wore rubber boots." Uncle Sam got up and went to the window. "It was in just such weather that Roger Williams made his way through the wilderness," he said as he looked out over the fields. "I never heard of him before," said Joe. "Then it is time you did. It is not a very long story. I don't believe it will do you any harm to stay long enough to hear it. So here it is: "Roger Williams was one of the noblest men who lived among the Puritans of long ago. He was a young minister. He had fine thoughts of his own. He did not need to have anyone else do his thinking for him. "When he first came to America with his young wife he settled in Boston. He afterwards went to Salem. He preached in a little church there. He said so many good things that people liked to hear him. "After a while the Puritans began to open their ears and their eyes, too. The leading men said: "'This man does not think just as we do. He must be wrong.' "They were very angry. You remember what I told you the other day about the Puritans?" "They wished everyone else to believe just as they did," answered Joe. "And were very strict and solemn," added Lucy. "You must remember another thing, too. The leading men of the church made all the laws for the town. Roger Williams did not think this was right. He was a minister himself, yet he believed the church should have nothing to do with governing the town. "Besides that, he thought, 'the King of England has no right to give the land in America to the people who come here. The Indians hold the land. It is theirs. They are the only ones who should sell it or give it away.' "'Dreadful! dreadful!' said the people of Salem. 'Roger Williams cannot be true to the king if he believes like that.'