Within a short time Nathan Hale of Connecticut, one of the bravest and most promising young officers in the army, presented himself to the general. "Can you ascertain for me the number and strength of the British on Long Island?" asked Washington. "I think I can," replied Hale; "I am willing to try." "You understand that it will cost your life if the enemy capture you. It is serious business." "I understand. I understood that when I entered the army," was young Hale's cool and heroic reply. "Go, then, and quickly as possible obtain the information I so much need." Hale went to Long Island in the capacity of a schoolmaster, obtained the information that Washington desired, and on his return was discovered and arrested as a spy. Without trial or court-martial he was executed, in extremely aggravating circumstances. "A clergyman, whose attendance he desired, was refused him; a Bible, for a moment's devotion, was not procured though he requested it. Letters which on the morning of his execution, he wrote to his mother and sister, were destroyed; and this very extraordinary reason was given by the provost-martial, 'that the rebels should not know that they had a man in the army who could die with so much firmness.' Unknown to all around him, without a single friend to offer him the least consolation, as amiable and as worthy a young man as America could boast was thus hung as a spy." His last words were: "I lament only that I have but one life to give to the cause of liberty and the rights of man." Soon after Washington withdrew his defeated army to Harlem Heights, he heard cannonading at the landing, where breastworks had been thrown up. Springing upon his horse, he galloped away in the direction of the firing, and, before he reached the place, he met his soldiers in full retreat before a squad of British, numbering not more than sixty or seventy. He drew his sword, and with threats, endeavored to rally them; but in vain. He was so shocked by their cowardice, and so determined to repel the foe, that he would have dashed forward to his death, had not his aides seized the reins of his charger, and turned him in the other direction. On the 20th of September, after the British took possession of New York, a fire started one night in a drinking saloon, where soldiers were revelling (perhaps celebrating their triumphal entry into the city), and it spread with great rapidity. The buildings were mostly of wood, so that the devouring flames licked them up as tinder; and although the thousands of British soldiers exerted themselves to the utmost to extinguish the fire, one quarter of the city, about one thousand buildings, was laid in ashes. At this time the army in Canada had withdrawn to Crown Point, numbering about six thousand, one half of them being sick and the other half disheartened and disaffected. General Washington ordered them to retire to Ticonderoga for safety and rest. The small-pox was spreading among them to an alarming degree.