That 22d of September was a Sabbath day, a day associated in Nathan Hale's mind with religious observances; prayers at the family altar, readings of the Bible, and gatherings of his friends within church walls. Whether or not his family knew the dangerous quest on which he had ventured, he knew that he was not absent from their memories, and that the family were bearing him in their thoughts that Sabbath morning. No other day could have made that assurance so real to him, and this thought was probably one of his strongest earthly consolations and inspirations while he was awaiting the slow but relentless preparations for his death. No wonder that he bore himself "calmly and with dignity," as Captain Montressor said of him. No wonder that he died bravely--seemingly without a tremor of soul. In his last words Nathan Hale, true and faithful in every relation and every act of his brief life, gave to his country more than his life, more than all the hopes he was relinquishing so freely for her sake. In one short, indomitable breath of patriotism, he uttered words that will be forgotten only when American history ceases to be read. William Cunningham, Provost Marshal of the English forces in America, murderer and inhuman jailer, would have laughed to scorn the idea that any being, human or divine, could preserve Nathan Hale's last words for the inspiration of coming generations, yet a kindly British officer, Captain John Montressor, carried them to Hale's friends. Cunningham has left a record of brutality unsurpassed in American history. He is himself said to have boasted that he had caused the death of two thousand American soldiers. We know that any reference to the prison ships in New York Harbor sets Cunningham before us as a cowardly murderer, starving men to death by depriving them of rations which the English supplied for them, and which he sold, pocketing the proceeds. He stands alone on a pedestal of infamy. The letters that Hale had written and left, as he hoped, to be delivered to his friends, Cunningham ruthlessly destroyed, giving as his reason that "the rebels should not know that they had a man in their army who could die with so much firmness." Though Hale's letters were destroyed, the English officer, John Montressor, aide to General Howe--a gentleman in whose presence we may safely assume that Cunningham, cowardly as all brutal men are, had not dared to maltreat Nathan Hale as he was known to maltreat other prisoners--that very Sunday evening spoke of Hale's death to General Putnam and Captain Alexander Hamilton at the American outposts where he had been sent with a flag of truce by General Howe to arrange for an exchange of prisoners. More was learned when a flag of truce was sent two days later to the British lines by General Washington, in answer to the one on September 22. Two friends of Hale, Captain Hull and Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Webb, were among those who went with the flag.