was in no wise responsible.  The unresisting dignity of his bearing is quite observable.  “We are now reckoning; we know not yet who is in debt.  I have no pay; but here is my body.”  Perhaps, in that unconspicuous frame, and through that humble garb, the sinewy nerves and muscles of steel, the compact and concentrated forces, that were the marvel of his times, and finally cost him his life, were apparent in his movements and attitudes.  It may be, that the sufferings and exposures of his previous life had left upon his swarthy features a stamp of care and melancholy, foreshadowing the greater wrongs and trials in store for him.  But the chief figure in the group is the just man who rose and rebuked the harsh and reprehensible procedure of the powerful landholder, neighbor and friend though he was.  The manner in which the arbitrary trooper bowed to the rebuke, if it does not mitigate our resentment of his conduct, illustrates the extraordinary influence of Nathaniel Ingersoll’s character, and demonstrates the deference in which all men held him.

There are in this affair other points worthy of notice, as showing the effects of their bitter feuds in rendering them insensible to every appeal of charity or humanity.  Their minds had become so soured, and their sense of what was right so impaired, that they neglected and refused to fulfil their most ordinary obligations to each other, and to themselves as a society.  Rates were not collected, and contracts were not complied with.  The minister and his family were left without the necessaries of life.  They were compelled to borrow even their clothing, articles of which constituted a part of the debt for which he was arrested in such a public and unfeeling manner.  A young woman testifies that she lived with Mr. Burroughs about two years, and says:  “My mistress did tell me that she had some serge of John Putnam’s wife, to make Mary a coat; and also some fustian of his wife, to make my mistress a pair of sleeves.”  The principal items in the account were for articles required at the death of his wife, by the usages of that day on funeral occasions.  Surely it was an outrage upon human nature to spring a suit at law and have a writ served on him, and take him as a prisoner, on such an occasion, under such circumstances, on an alleged debt incurred by such a bereavement, when poverty and necessity had left him no alternative.  The whole procedure receives the stamp, not only of cruelty, but of infamy, from the fact, which Nathaniel Ingersoll compelled Putnam to acknowledge before the whole congregation, that the account had been settled and the debt paid long before.