“But he was a prisoner? A prisoner taken in open warfare. How could such an one be hanged?”
“By all the code of civilized warfare he could not,” broke from the farmer passionately. “They have done it in defiance of the code. But there shall be retaliation, Hannah. Eye for eye,” he cried lifting his clenched hands and shaking them fiercely above his head. “Tooth for tooth, life for life. There shall be retaliation.”
A sudden, wild cry burst from her:
“Will that give me back my son? Oh, my boy! My boy!” And she broke into a passion of weeping.
The farmer motioned the girls away when they would have gone to her.
“Let her weep,” he said, controlling his own emotion with difficulty. “’Tis Nature’s way toward helping her to bear it. Come! leave her for a time.”
So the maidens crept to their own little room to give vent to the sorrow that filled them. The shy fellow had endeared himself to them, and his untimely end affected them deeply. The days that followed were sorrowful ones. Nurse Johnson was completely prostrated, and Mrs. Ashley added to her woe a great anxiety for her own son. It fell to the lot of Peggy and Sally to look after the household affairs, and they were thankful for the occupation.
The last sad rites were performed at Freehold. Wrapped in his country’s flag, Fairfax Johnson was buried with all the honors of war. But with the firing of the last volley the indignation of Monmouth County blazed forth. A single deed of violence and cruelty affects the nerves more than when these are exercised upon a more extended scale, and this act was peculiarly atrocious. The cry of Thomas Ashley sounded upon every lip: Retaliation! The cry grew as all the details of the inhuman murder became known.
The young man had been charged with being privy to the killing of Edwards, even though he pointed out to his captors that the refugee’s death had occurred after his capture. The opportunity to rid themselves of so active an adversary, however, was not one to be neglected; so, without listening to a defense, or even going through the form of a trial, he was hurried to Gravelly Point by a band of sixteen loyalists under Captain Lippencott, a former Jerseyman and an officer in a refugee regiment, The King’s Rangers, and there hanged. It was said that he met death with great firmness and composure. Upon his breast was affixed the label:
“Up goes Johnson for Frank Edwards.”