fter Mr. Ripley's death, Mrs. Ripley with her baby boy returned to
Deacon Hale's home almost as an adopted daughter, comfortably provided
for by the estate of her late husband. A member of the Hale family, she
must have seen that whatever was true of Nathan Hale in the days when
they were boy and girl together, he, now a Yale graduate and a man among
men, first as teacher and then as soldier, was even more worthy of her
love than in their early days. It is probable that they corresponded
more or less, though happily none of the letters of either are preserved
for the curious to delight in. All we know is that in December, 1775, a
year after her husband's death, Nathan Hale stopped in Coventry while
absent from camp on army business, and the broken engagement has been
said to have been then renewed, this time without opposition.

Having been married and widowed, and having lost her little son, Alice
Adams Ripley was now free to listen to the claims of the first love that
had entered her heart. What the few brief months that remained to Nathan
Hale must have meant to Alice Ripley, believing in him and caring for
him, only the noblest women can comprehend.

In regard to the letters written by Nathan Hale on the morning of his
execution, one of these letters is said to have been written to his
mother. One or two of his biographers have inferred that this must be an
error, and that it was written to his father or to a brother. With the
natural delicacy always so conspicuous in him, a letter to his
"mother," so called, in reality the mother of one whom we believe to
have been his betrothed wife, Alice Adams Ripley, who would show it to
Alice and undoubtedly give it to her, was probably what he would have
written. The others would know what he had written, but Alice Adams
would doubtless possess the letter.

Alice Adams was to live many, many years, to become one of the most
notable women in the city in which she dwelt; so honored that a copy of
her portrait has long hung in the Athenaeum, Hartford's finest shrine for
such portraits.

It was said of her that for several years after Nathan's death she had
no intention of marrying, but, after a widowhood of ten years,
events--some say changed circumstances--led her to accept an offer of
marriage from William Lawrence, of Hartford, which was thenceforth her
home. For many years she was naturally associated with the social life
of that city.

Whatever letters may have passed