onable,
and could only be settled by a duel, in which he was shot dead.

During the period of Williams' confinement on Long Island, it was the
pleasure of some of the British officers to stroll among the American
prisoners, and tauntingly ask them in what trade they had been employed.
When Williams was asked this impertinent question by a titled officer,
he replied, that he had been bred in that situation which had taught him
to rebuke and punish insolence, and that the questioner would have ample
proof of his apprenticeship on a repetition of his offence. The noble
did not attempt it, or demand satisfaction for the contempt with which
he had been treated, but it is probable, that through his
instrumentality, Williams was accused of carrying on a secret
correspondence with Washington. There was, indeed, some apparent
foundation for suspicion in Williams' superior ability, and from the
respect paid to him by his fellow-prisoners. He was seized, and without
one word of defence on his part being listened to, without being
suffered to confront his accusers, he was suddenly removed to the
provost jail in New York.

Here he was delivered to the tender mercies of harsh turnkeys, and
confined in a room about sixteen feet square that was seldom visited by
the breath of heaven, and always remaining in a state of loathsome
filth. Among other prisoners, was the celebrated Ethan Allen, and he
shared the miserable den, in which Williams was confined. Their only
visitors were wretches who came to glut their brutal curiosity, and to
torture their victims with loud sentiments of delight in the
anticipation of seeing them hanged. Letters complaining of such cruel
treatment were repeatedly but vainly addressed to the commandant of New
York, and they thus suffered for seven or eight months.

Their health was much impaired, for their food was of the vilest sort,
and scarce enough to keep soul and body together, and to add to these
discomforts, the anxiety that preyed upon their minds, was terrible in
the extreme. The naturally fine constitution of Williams was much
impaired, and he never recovered entirely from the effects of his
imprisonment. But he is still full of hope, to which, though not written
at the time of his incarceration, his own words to one of his family
thus bear witness: "I flatter myself I shall still see a day, a
prosperous day, when we shall all be assembled in some agreeable spot in
the neighborhood of Hagerstown, wh