"Get your heavy coat, Joseph! Betty, pack the bread into that basket and ask your father to bring down our heaviest blankets!"
"I hope nothing will happen to this nice home of ours," sighed Betty as her father on their departure locked the door.
"Nor to our corn either," he added, with a thought of the winter's food.
Soon they established themselves in the largest home of the neighborhood, which stood open in such a moment of need. Mrs. Haines, ready and capable, did her part for the neighboring families assembled there, while Mr. Haines and Joseph lent their aid to strengthen the fortifications of timber outside and to erect a sentry box on the roof, where guard was to be kept night and day.
As Joseph Haines took his turn to guard, the first night of alarm, Betty crept up to the roof after him and immediately cried, pointing across the river, "Look there, Joe!"
A small glow of fire, seen in the distance, soon brightened the whole sky with flames.
"Work of the Indians!" muttered Joe. When word was brought the next day that two houses and three barns with a large quantity of grain had been burned that night by the Indians, Betty implored her brother, "Oh, don't let them burn our house, Joe!"
"No, little Betty, I'll see that they do not," he declared with determination.
Later the report reached Dover of six houses burned at Oyster River (a neighboring village) and two men killed. The young men of Dover rose with indignation at the insults of the Indians and begged Major Waldron, commander of the militia, to grant them permission to protect the town in their own way. This request granted, some twenty of them, Joseph Haines in the number, armed themselves and scattered through the woods, hoping in that way to find the lurking savages who were doing their mischief in small groups.
Just at dusk Joseph, with one companion, took his position in the woods near his own home.