chusetts; they had been to pray that there might be no fighting.
As they walked along, talking together, two guns were fired out of
the bushes. One of the white men fell dead in the road, and another
was badly hurt.

[Illustration: Map of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.]

The shots were fired by Indians. This was the way they always fought
when they could. They were not cowards, but they did not come out
boldly, but would fire from behind trees and rocks. Often a white
man would be killed without even seeing who shot him.

At first the fighting was mainly in those villages of Plymouth Colony
which were nearest Narragansett Bay; then it spread to the valley
of the Connecticut River and the neighborhood. Deerfield,
Springfield, Brookfield,[4] Groton,[5] and many other places in
Massachusetts were attacked. The Indians would creep up stealthily
in the night, burn the houses, carry off the women and children
prisoners if they could, kill the rest of the inhabitants, take their
scalps home and hang them up in their wigwams.

[Illustration: AN ATTACKING INDIAN.]

At Brookfield the settlers left their houses, and gathered in one
strong house for defence. The Indians burned all the houses but that
one, and did their best to burn that, too. They dipped rags in
brimstone, such as we make matches of, fastened them to the points
of their arrows, set fire to them, and then shot the blazing arrows
into the shingles of the roof. When the Indians saw that the shingles
had caught, and were beginning to flame up, they danced for joy, and
roared like wild bulls. But the men in the house managed to put out
the fire on the roof. Then the savages got a cart, filled it with
hay, set it on fire, and pushed it up against the house. This time
they thought that they should certainly burn the white people out;
but just then a heavy shower came up, and put out the fire. A little
later, some white soldiers marched into the village, and saved the
people in the house.

[Footnote 3: Swansea (Swon'ze).]

[Footnote 4: See map in this paragraph.]

[Footnote 5: Groton (Graw'ton).]

91. The fight at Hadley; what Colonel[6] Goffe[7] did.--At Hadley,
the people were in the meeting-house when the terrible Indian
war-whoop[8] rang through the village. The savages drove back those
who dared to go out against them, and it seemed as if the village
must be destroyed. Suddenly a white-haired old man, sword in hand,
appeared among the settlers. No one k