"Gentlemen, I think I owe to my country the accomplishment of an object so important and so much desired by the commander of her armies, and I know no mode of obtaining the information but by assuming a disguise and passing into the enemy's camp. I am fully sensible of the consequences of discovery and capture in such a situation. But for a year I have been attached to the Army and have not rendered any material service while receiving a compensation for which I make no return. Yet am I not influenced by any expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary for the public good becomes honourable by being necessary. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service its claims to the performance of that service become imperious." On the same afternoon Hale met Washington for the second time, receiving from the General instructions with regard to the perilous task he had undertaken. He was also given a general order addressed to American shipmasters to convey Captain Hale to any part of Long Island on which he might desire to land. Sundown already saw him on his way, accompanied by a sergeant and a boatman, to a point fifty miles north of New York, Norwalk, where there was a safe crossing of the Sound into territory occupied by British forces. Dismissing his companions at dawn on 15th September, and exchanging into the brown civilian dress and Quaker hat common to that period, Hale ferried across the narrow water, instructing his retainers at the last moment to await him at the same spot with a boat on 20th September. Reaching Huntington Bay on the other side, he assumed the character of a schoolmaster who, disgusted with the course of the Revolutionary cause, had come to pursue his profession in surroundings more congenial to his political and social tastes. His appearance and speech both carried conviction to all with whom he conversed; he was made free of the British lines, visited all the camps on Long Island, making observations openly and drawing up memoranda, written in Latin, as well as plans, in the privacy of his room. In the meantime, the British had invaded Manhattan and captured New York, so that as far as the penetration of the designs of English commanders was concerned, Hale had really made his excursion to little purpose beyond what he had achieved in the gathering of military information on Long Island. Having heard of the British success, he retraced his steps in the direction of Norwalk, and on 18th September, at sundown, found himself again at Huntington Bay, where he had first landed on his mission. Wearing coarse shoes with loose inner soles, under which he was able comfortably to conceal his drawings and memoranda, and still in the plain dress of a middle-class citizen, he felt secure in the disguise which had already carried him so happily through the perils of many British camps. Accordingly he