ry, state of
Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale College--young, brave,
honorable--and at the time of his death a Captain in Col. Webb's
Regiment of Continental Troops. Having never seen a circumstantial
account of his untimely and melancholy end, I will give it. I was
attached to his company and in his confidence. After the retreat of our
army from Long Island, he informed me, he was sent for to Head Quarters,
and was solicited to go over to Long Island to discover the disposition
of the enemy's camps, &c., expecting them to attack New York, but that
he was too unwell to go, not having recovered from a recent illness;
that upon a second application he had consented to go, and said I must
go as far with him as I could, with safety, and wait for his return.

"Accordingly, we left our Camp on Harlem Heights, with the intention of
crossing over the first opportunity; but none offered until we arrived
at Norwalk, fifty miles from New York. In that harbor there was an armed
sloop and one or two row galleys. Capt. Hale had a general order to all
armed vessels, to take him to any place he should designate: he was set
across the Sound, in the sloop, at Huntington (Long Island) by Capt.
Pond, who commanded the vessel. Capt. Hale had changed his uniform for a
plain suit of citizen's brown clothes, with a round broad-brimmed hat,
assuming the character of a Dutch schoolmaster, leaving all his other
clothes, commission, public and private papers, with me, and also his
silver shoebuckles, saying they would not comport with his character of
schoolmaster, and retaining nothing but his College diploma, as an
introduction to his assumed calling. Thus equipped, we parted for the
last time in life. He went on his mission, and I returned back again to
Norwalk, with orders to stop there until he should return, or hear from
him, as he expected to return back again to cross the sound, if he
succeeded in his object."

So far as there is any other evidence, it tends to confirm this part of
Sergeant Hempstead's report, and he is to-day considered one of the most
valuable authorities on Hale's last intercourse with brother soldiers.

Of the details of his captain's arrest and execution, which are told in
the last part of the account, and of which Hempstead had no personal
knowledge, he declares that he was "authentically informed" and did
"most religiously believe" them. Some of the incidents he gives appear
to have been proved since to have no