h plea. They were determined to kill him, and die he
must.

He was taken on shore at Sandy Hook, and on the beach a rude gallows was
constructed of three fence rails, and there he was hung. Before he died,
he wrote his will, resting the paper on the top of a flour barrel; and
it is said that his handwriting was as firm and legible as if he had
been sitting at a table in his own house.

This inhuman and lawless execution of a man so well known and of such
good reputation as Captain Huddy, created great indignation in the
patriotic party all over the country, and there was a general demand
that the British army should deliver up a man named Lippencot, who had
been the leader of the party which had hung Huddy; but the British did
not consent to this. They did make a show of investigating the matter;
and Lippencot, who was an officer of a refugee regiment regularly
enlisted in the British service, was tried by court-martial. But he was
acquitted; and no satisfaction was offered to the Americans for this
crime, which had been committed in open defiance of the laws of war.

But the British commander in chief, who arrived about this time, was a
man of honor and good sense, and he openly condemned the action of
Lippencot and his men, and assured the Americans that he would do what
he could to further investigate the matter.

This, however, did not satisfy the country, and from every side there
came demands that some one of the officers who were then prisoners in
the American lines should be executed in retaliation for Huddy's murder,
unless Lippencot were delivered up to the Americans. Here, then, opened
the fourth act of this bloody play of progression, and we will tell the
story of the other captain.

It is a horrible thing to deliberately execute an innocent man because
some one else has committed a crime; but war is horrible, and we must
expect that horrible things will continually spring from it. As no
satisfaction could be obtained from the British for this acknowledged
outrage and murder,--for in acquitting Lippencot the British authorities
virtually took upon themselves the responsibility of Huddy's
execution,--the Americans, being at war and acting in accordance with
the bloody rules of war, determined to select an officer from among the
English prisoners in the American lines, who should be executed in
retaliation for Huddy's death.

As soon as this order had been issued, thirteen British officers, who
were at