This farsighted judgment applied equally to the communistic concept of that time and the present idea of a short working day, a living wage whether earned or not, and an absolute democratic control over all individual rights, which is the perversion of civil liberty, and more potent than despotism because imposed by a multitude. Under private ownership of land, which superseded the common stock plan, there was better incentive to toil, and the Governor with pleasure observed that even the women and children went willingly afield. Assignments came to be made of one acre to a family, near the palisaded hamlet for convenience and better security. But on petition of the planters, Bradford directed that the allotments should be for continuous use, rather than for one year as heretofore. This encouraged those who had achieved good success on their area, to go forward still in their agricultural accomplishments. They raised the more, as soon as numbers and strength allowed, because they found a corn market among the half-hundred fishing vessels which annually visited the northern coasts. The story is familiar, how the distressed new-comers at first smoothed the graves of their plague-smitten members, to hide the number of deaths from the savages, whose derisive shouts from the forests mingled with their lamentations. But this local Indian menace was comparatively slight. All the Cape Indians, including those whom the Pilgrim explorers had unintentionally aroused, became before long their permanent good neighbors. This desirable outcome was facilitated by a singular circumstance, the roaming of a boy who lost his way. John Billington, Jr., wandered in the woods until the Cummaquid Indians found him twenty miles down the coast. They carried him farther, to the Nausets, the very tribe of the first encounter. Bradford sent notice of the missing lad to Massasoit, who inquired for him among his subjects. On ascertaining his whereabouts, ten colonists and two interpreters were dispatched in the shallop to Nauset, who received the boy bead-laden and well, and held a friendly parley with Chief Aspinet and his men. These natives forwarded peace delegates to Plymouth, a course not actually required but acceptable after their conflict of 1620.