"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