, not knowing that Betty quietly followed him
through the darkness, even slipping through the big gateway without being
seen.

The fire had already caught the house, while the young men were occupied
in binding the prisoners. Mr. Haines dashed to the well for water and
returned to find his Betty beating the flames with a broom.

Mrs. Haines, missing Betty and suspecting that she had followed her
father, was on the spot by the time Joseph had turned his attention from
the prisoners to find that the house had been saved from the flames.

Word of the efficient guard at Dover was reported by the escaping
Indians, and no further attack was made at that time.

MY NEW HAMPSHIRE

The Indian raids had told heavily upon the colonists in the region of the
Piscataqua. Scattered gardens had been devastated; homes built by great
effort had been destroyed in a night; family circles had been broken by
death, or by capture, and the colony had suffered the loss of strong
young men who were its mainstay.

John Stevens had been crippled by the tomahawk of an Indian; his whole
family and that of his brother had been swept out of existence by the
same cruel hands, and all that was left was his home and one little
nephew, David.

"This country is ours now, David, and we must hold it," he would say to
the manly little fellow, who was already facing the responsibilities of
life, though with arms too young to swing the axe or to steady the
plough.

Glancing at the sturdy little boy, John Stevens, unable to leave his
chair, looked through the open doorway to his cleared land and his
forests, and wondered how, to say nothing of protecting the country, he
could keep the boy and himself alive. "David," he cried on sudden
thought, "the garden shall be yours and the forest mine. We will each do
what we can. I still have a strong arm left to me and a sharp knife. The
red oaks can be felled and sawed at the mill. Here in my chair with my
knife I can shape the short boards into hogshead staves. The town accepts
them for taxes at twenty-five shillings a thousand."

"Perhaps," added David, "Mr. Cutt, the merchant, will have use for some."

Together the man and the boy, before the open door, planned for the
coming days until the twilight had settled into night.

The simple home was remote, and neighbors rarely dropped in. David took
the necessary trips to the Bank, as the upper end of the town by the
river was still called, or to the So