One atrocity had indeed been committed, in a neighbouring state, which, besides exciting the fiercest indignation, had taught the occupants of the valley how little their security was owing to any relenting of spirit, or want of military daring, on the part of the refugees, whom the general success of the republican arms had driven in great numbers into the city of New York. A certain Captain Joshua, or Jonathan, Huddy, of the New Jersey state troops, having been captured, after a gallant resistance, at one of the posts in Monmouth county of that state, by a party of loyalists from New York, was for a while immured in prison, then carried back to his native state, and finally hanged by his captors, without trial, sentence, or any authority whatever, except what was derived from the verbal orders of a body of men calling themselves the Board of Directors of the Associated Loyalists. The result of this wanton and brutal murder, and of the failure of the British authorities to bring the chief perpetrator to justice, was an instant order on the part of the American Commander-in-chief, to retaliate upon a British prisoner of equal rank; and before the month of May was over, young Asgill of the British Guards, whose story is familiar to all readers of American history, was conducted to the lines at Morristown, to await, in painful uncertainty, the fate that now depended, or seemed to depend, upon the movements of his countrymen in relation to the true criminal.