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 Athenæum, 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 between Nathan Hale and Alice Adams Ripley, no trace of them remains to-day. For this we can only be grateful that, unlike other unfortunate lovers,--Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browing, for instance,--not one word remains of their correspondence. That belonged to him and to her alone. It is fortunate that no mere curiosity hunter can feast his eyes or gossip over the words these two people wrote to each other. To Alice's husband Nathan's father gave the powder horn she once spoke of as having seen Nathan working upon in his customary intense fashion, "doing that one thing as if there was nothing else to be thought of at that time." Its being given to Mr. Lawrence by Nathan's father, to whom it must have been dear, proves that Mr. Lawrence, as well as his wife, was a welcome addition to the Hale family. Mr. Lawrence in turn gave it to his son William, and it is now treasured by the Connecticut Historical Society.