upon a fruitful topic, the cruel treatment of the American prisoners, and which has fixed a stain upon the perpetrators never to be wiped out! Sears had returned to the prisonship about the last of March, and in the month of May he and Van Arsdale, with other prisoners, were picked out and removed again to the Sugar House. This was probably a step towards an exchange of prisoners, then contemplated, which made it necessary to separate those belonging to the land service from the naval prisoners. The Sugar House, with its five or six low stories, was crammed with American patriots, and the passerby in warm weather could see its little grated windows filled with human faces, trying to catch a breath of the external air! But now a little more lenity seems to have been shown some of the prisoners, perhaps in view of the exchange. Van Arsdale found a friend in his father's cousin, Vincent Day, who had enlisted in Lamb's Artillery, in 1775, but did not go to Canada, and was now regarded as a loyalist. He was permitted to see Van Arsdale, bring him food, etc.,[28] and a next step was to get leave for him to visit his house. This was a most grateful relief; but it being suspected that Van Arsdale meditated an escape (which my informant said was the case), this privilege was cut off, and Day sent to the Provost for his humanity. This incident was related to me by Mr. Abraham Van Arsdale, before mentioned. Van Arsdale had dragged out some two months of miserable existence in the Sugar House, and in all nine months and a half as a prisoner, when the day of happy deliverance arrived. Gen. Washington had long been trying to effect an exchange of prisoners, but to overcome the scruples of the British commander took months of negotiation. Terms were at length agreed upon by which some six hundred Americans were set at liberty. On July 20th, Van Arsdale was released from his dungeon, and taken with others in a barge down the bay, and _via_ the Kills to Elizabethtown Point, where they landed, and were delivered up to Major John Beatty, the American Commissary. In marching from the Point two miles to the village of Elizabethtown, Van Arsdale was obliged to support his friend Sears, who was too feeble to walk alone. Now breathing the air of freedom, they set out together for their homes in Hanover Precinct, where Van Arsdale was heartily greeted by his numerous friends who received him as one risen from the dead, and found a warm welcome in the house of his brother Tunis. Emaciated to a degree, and suffering from scurvy, he was for some time under the doctor's care, but finally regained his health.