“Yes,” replied Grandma Elsie.  “It was only the other day that I was refreshing my memory in regard to it by glancing over Lossing’s account given in his Field Book of the Revolution.”

“Then please tell us about it, mamma,” pleaded Walter.

“Very willingly, since you wish to hear it,” she said, noting the look of eager interest on the young faces about her.

“Captain Huddy was an ardent patriot and consequently hated by his Tory neighbors.  He lived at a place called Colt’s Neck, about five miles from Freehold.

“One evening, in the summer of 1780, a party of some sixty refugees, headed by a mulatto named Titus, attacked Huddy’s house.  There was no one in it at the time but Huddy himself, and a servant girl, some twenty years old, named Lucretia Emmons.”

“She wouldn’t be of much use for fighting men,” remarked Walter, with a slight sniff of contempt.

“Perhaps Captain Huddy may have thought differently,” replied his mother, with a slightly amused smile.  “There were several guns in the house which she loaded for Huddy while he passed from one window to another firing through them at his foes.  Titus and several others were wounded; then they set fire to the house and Huddy surrendered.

“He was taken on board of a boat from which he jumped into the water and escaped, assisted in so doing by the fire of some militia who were in pursuit of the Tories.

“About two years later Huddy was in command of a block house near the village of Tom’s River, when it was attacked by some refugees from New York, and, his ammunition giving out, he was obliged to surrender.  He and his companions were taken to New York, then back to Sandy Hook, where they were placed on board a guard-ship and heavily ironed.

“Shortly afterward he was taken to Gravelly Point, by sixteen refugees under Captain Lippincott, and hung on a gallows made of three rails.

“He met his fate like the brave man that he was, first calmly writing his will on the head of the barrel upon which he was presently to stand for execution.

“A desperate Tory, named Philip White, had been killed while Huddy was a prisoner in New York, and these men falsely accused Huddy of having had a share in his death.  After hanging him that cruel, wicked Lippincott fastened to his breast a notice to the effect that they had killed Captain Huddy in revenge for the death of Philip White, and that they were determined to hang man for man while a refugee lived.”

“Oh, what dreadful, dreadful things people did in those days!” sighed Grace.  “Did anybody venture to take the body down and bury it, Grandma Elsie?”

“Yes, Captain Huddy’s body was carried to Freehold and buried with the honors of war.”

“And did people care much about it?”

“Yes, indeed! his death caused great excitement and indignation, and Dr. Woodhull, the Freehold minister, who preached the funeral sermon from the piazza of the hotel, earnestly entreated Washington to retaliate in order to prevent a repetition of such deeds.