[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 knew who he was; but he called
to them to follow him, as a captain calls to his men, and they obeyed
him. The astonished Indians turned and ran. When, after all was over,
the whites looked for their brave leader, he had gone; they never
saw him again. Many thought that he was an angel who had been sent
to save them. But the angel was Colonel Goffe, an Englishman, who
was one of the judges who had sentenced King Charles the First to
death during a great war in England. He had escaped to America; and,
luckily for the people of Hadley, he was hiding in the house of a
friend in that village when the Indians attacked it.
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