This scene was enacted at Pawtucket, near Providence, but then within the precincts of Plymouth colony. Some hours after the affray, Roger Williams learned from an Indian runner that some pale faces were at Pawtucket almost starved. He at once sent the sufferers food and spirits, and a cordial invitation to visit his cabin. After some delay they came, enlisting the sympathy of their kind host by a pitiful tale of loss of way and hunger in the forest. Towards ten o’clock all retired. At midnight a loud cry was heard. The Indians clamored at the door for admittance, and to Roger Williams’ queries they replied by informing him that one of their brothers lay almost dead in the woods from wounds inflicted by a party of pale-faces. “Have you seen them?” they shouted. Meantime, the murderers, awakened by the cries, had fled. They were pursued, and three of the four were captured, and arraigned for trial at Plymouth. A jury was empannelled, and among the twelve “good men and true” were Bradford, and Standish, and Prince, and Winslow.[924] No delay was suffered, but the trial was fair and open. The guilt of the assassins was clearly proved, and they were sentenced to be hung.[925] Three limp forms suspended from the gallows-tree a little later, gave most palpable evidence that justice covered even the tangled wilderness morasses with its ægis. It was as certain death to kill an Indian in the forests of America, as to slay a noble in the crowded streets of London. The effect of this execution was salutary. Its strict impartiality pleased the shrewd red men. It convinced them of the certainty of the colonial protection. And kindred acts before had won them to surrender that most prominent trait in their habits, the avenging of their personal wrongs; they adjourned their injuries to the justice of the Pilgrim courts and invoked the statute, sure that “The good need fear no law; It is his safety, and the bad man’s awe.” But now this old epoch was buried: a new one dawned. The Indian surveyed the incoming pale-face tide which seemed always to flow and never to ebb. The hunting-grounds of his people began to disappear. His own domain was restricted—there was no longer free range. A farm was here; a clearing was there; yonder stood a settler’s cabin. The “medicines” of the red men grew alarmed. They asked each other: “Where will this end?” To be sure, the settlers held their estates by purchase; but the Indians did not always understand the value of a bargain from which they reaped no benefit; nor did they at all times recognize the validity of contracts made by their sachems, perhaps without the knowledge of the tribe, and which alienated the forest acres of their immemorial inheritance.