The Governor, in a dignified reply, once more urged upon them the absolute necessity of waiving for the present the vexed question of the proprietary estates, and passing a bill for the relief of the present sufferers; but the Quakers remained deaf and mute, and would not budge one inch from their position.

All the city was roused.  In houses like that of Benjamin Ashley, where people were coming and going the whole day long, and where travellers from these border lands were to be found who could give information at first hand, the discussion went on every day and all day long.  Ashley himself was keenly excited.  He had quite broken away from a number of his old friends who supported the Assembly in its blind obstinacy.  Nobody could sit by unmoved whilst Charles and Humphrey Angell told their tale of horror and woe; and, moreover, both Julian Dautray and Fritz Neville had much to tell of the aggressive policy of France, and of her resolute determination to stifle and strangle the growing colonies of England, by giving them no room to expand, whilst she herself claimed boundless untrodden regions which she could never hope to populate or hold.

Fresh excitements came daily to the city.  Early one morning, as the tardy daylight broke, a rumble of wheels in the street below told of the arrival of travellers.  The wheels stopped before Ashley’s door, and he hastily finished his toilet and went down.

In a few moments all the house was in a stir and commotion.  A terrible whisper was running from mouth to mouth.  That cart standing grimly silent in the street below carried, it was said, a terrible load.  Beneath its heavy cover lay the bodies of about twenty victims of Indian ferocity; and the guardians of the load were stern-faced men, bearing recent scars upon their own persons, who ate and drank in stony silence, and only waited till the Assembly had met before completing their grim mission.

The thing had got wind in the town by now, and the square space was thronged.  The members of the Assembly looked a little uneasy as they passed through the crowd, but not a sound was made till all had gathered in the upper room.

Then from out the yard of the inn was dragged the cart.  No horses were fastened to it.  The young men of the city dragged it out and pushed it along.  The silent, grim-faced guardians walked in front.  As it reached the square the crowd sent up a groaning cry, and opened right and left for the dreadful load to be set in position before the windows of the great room where the Assembly had met.

Then the cover was thrown back, and yells and cries arose from all.  Shouts were raised for the Assembly to come and look at their work.

There was no resisting the mandate of the crowd.  White and trembling, the members of the Assembly were had out upon the steps, and forced to look at the bodies of their victims.  The crowd hooted, groaned, yelled with maddened fury.  The advocates of peace shrank into themselves, appalled at the evidences of barbarities they had sought to believe exaggerated.  It was useless now to attempt to deny the truth of what had been reported.