"I fear the Indians may be in the town, Benjamin," remarked Mrs. Heard to her oldest son, with some alarm. "Perhaps," replied Benjamin, "we had better go right to the Waldron's garrison, since it is so near. I see lights there." The party, filled with fear, hastened to the house suggested and knocked at the outer gate. "Let us in!" they pleaded. No answer, however, came from the home within. Benjamin then climbed the wall and looked over the top. To his horror, he saw an Indian, armed with a gun, standing in the open doorway of the house. Benjamin had not been seen, and the confusion within had drowned the cries outside. Jumping down, he started his party with utmost speed to their own garrison house. They had not gone far, before, to his dismay, he realized that his mother was not with them. [Illustration] He returned to the scene of their peril to find his mother, exhausted by fright, still at the gate. She was lying there unable to move. "Go," she implored him in a whisper, "and help the others to safety! I will come as soon as my strength returns." At that moment a cry of fear from the others, and his mother's last urgent appeal drove Benjamin to their rescue while his brave mother was left to her fate. Recovering a little, Mrs. Heard crept to some protecting bushes where she lay until daylight, when the gate opened, and an Indian with a pistol approached her. He paused and looked at her very hard. Silently he left but returned immediately, for another keen look. This time, his grim savage face still unmoved, he grunted-- "Good squaw kept Indian boy safe! Indian no forget!" Then he ran yelling to the house, with some word for his friends who seemed to be there in numbers. Soon after the Waldron house burst into flames. Not until the house had burned to the ground, and the Indians had gone, could Mrs. Heard gather strength enough to move. She feared the same sad end for her own home, but, to her surprise, she found it standing unharmed. Surely she had received her blessing for the bowl of broth and aid to the Indian lad, for her family and the friends, who had succeeded in reaching the house, reported that they had been free from attack through the horrors of that night, which were long remembered by the people of Dover. THOMAS TOOGOOD OUTWITS AN INDIAN An Incident of 1690. "There, you clumsy thing, you've stepped in the cat's saucer and spilled the milk. Be gone from here," and the crabbed old aunt, who kept house for the Toogoods, switched her broom after Tom as he moved good-naturedly out the back door. Thomas Toogood was overgrown, and awkward, and seemed always to be doing the wrong thing. He now sauntered out to the shed, where his father was feeding the cows and his sister tossing grain to the hens. "Tom," said his father, pointing to a gun in the corner, "I traded some corn for a gun for you, in Dover yesterday. They say that wild ducks are now found on the Cocheco. Thought you might like to try for them."