An equally cruel fate befell a trader named Tilly, who was taken
alive by the Indians and tortured. Tilly came from Massachusetts
Bay and was going up the river to Hartford. When he landed at
Saybrook, as all travelers were obliged to do, he saw a paper
nailed up over the fort gate with orders that no boat going up
the river should stop anywhere between Saybrook and Wethersfield.
These orders were put up by Lieutenant Gardiner because a boat
with three men well armed in it had lately been captured by the
river Indians. Tilly, however, refused to obey, and quarreled
with Gardiner. "I wish you, and also charge you," said Gardiner
to him in reply, "to observe that which you have read at the
gate; 'tis my duty to God and my masters which is the ground of
this, had you but eyes to see it; but you will not till you feel
it." Tilly went up the river safely, obeying orders; but coming
down, when he was about three miles above Saybrook, he went
ashore with only one man and carelessly fired off his gun. The
Indians, hearing it, came up, captured him, and carried him away.
Gardiner called the spot where this happened "Tilly's Folly."

It was a winter of great responsibility and danger for Lieutenant
Lion Gardiner, and all his courage and good sense were needed to
carry him safely through it. Once he was himself wounded by
Indian arrows and nearly lost his life. On the 22d of February,
he "went out with ten men and three dogs, half a mile from the
house, to burn the weeds, leaves, and reeds upon the neck of
land" behind the fort, when, suddenly, four Indians "started up
out of the fiery reeds," and the sentinels he had set to watch
called to him that a great many more were coming from "the other
side of the marsh." The Indians attacked his party, killed three