are indeed melancholy! That about the
second week of September, he went to Stamford, crossed to Long
Island (Dr. Waldo writes) and had finished his plans, but before he
could get off, was betrayed, taken, and hanged without ceremony....
Some entertain hopes that all this is not true, but it is a gloomy,
dejected hope. Time may determine. Conclude to go to the camp next
week."

He afterwards wrote that Webb, one of Washington's staff, brought word
to Washington that Nathan Hale, "being suspected by his movements that
he wanted to get out of New York, was taken up and examined by the
general [Howe] and some minutes being found upon him, orders were
immediately given that he should be hanged. When at the gallows, he
spoke and told that he was a Capt. in the Continental army, by name
Nathan Hale."

To those who have experienced the long weeks of distressing anxiety that
often fall to the lot of those whose friends are in battle, or carried
prisoners to unknown camps, no words are needed to depict the anxiety
among Nathan Hale's family until particulars of his noble death were
finally learned.

It is a solemn but perhaps a comforting fact, that the deepest human
distress seems, after a few generations have passed, to have been "writ
in water." Bitter as must have been those early sorrowful hours, the
only later reminder of the tears that then flowed is given in the
statement that one who had loved him could not speak of him fifty years
later without tears in her eyes.

Of how many wept for him we can form no conception. Indeed, we should
have pitied any warmhearted girl or young man who knew him, and had
shared his joyous young life, who could have heard of his tragic death
without tears almost as bitter as for one intensely loved.

Duly Enoch Hale and his family learned all that ever will be known of
the last days of their beloved, and now honored, dead.

The following letter of Deacon Richard Hale's--good man and uncertain
speller that he was!--was written to his brother Samuel at Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, a few months after Nathan's death had become known:

DEAR BROTHER

I Recd your favor of the 17th of February Last and rejoce to
hear that you and your Famley ware well your obversation as to the
Diffulty of the times is very just. so gloomey a day wee niver saw
before but I trust our Cause is Just and for our Consolation in the
times of greatest destr