on the lines, patrolling, collecting
fuel, and performing such other offices as fell to her lot.

After the battle of White Plains she received two severe wounds, one of
which was in her thigh. Naturally, a surgeon was sent for at once, but
the plucky girl, who could far more easily endure pain than the thought
of discovery, extracted the ball herself with penknife and needle before
hospital aid arrived.

In the spring of 1783 General Patterson selected her for his waiter, and
Deborah so distinguished herself for readiness and courage that the
general often praised to the other men of the regiment the heroism of
his "smock-faced boy."

It is at this stage of the story that the inevitable denouement
occurred. The young soldier fell ill with a prevailing epidemic, and
during her attack of unconsciousness her sex was discovered by the
attendant physician, Doctor Bana. Immediately she was removed by the
physician's orders to the apartment of the hospital matron, under whose
care she remained until discharged as well.

Deborah's appearance in her uniform was sufficiently suggestive, as has
been said, of robust masculinity to attract the favourable attention of
many young women. What she had not counted upon was the arousing in one
of these girls of a degree of interest which should imperil her secret.
Her chagrin, the third morning after the doctor's discovery, was
appreciably deepened, therefore, by the arrival of a love-letter from a
rich and charming young woman of Baltimore whom the soldier, "Robert
Shurtleff," had several times met, but whose identity with the writer of
the letter our heroine by no means suspected. This letter, accompanied
by a gift of fruit, the compiler of the "Female Review" gives as
follows:

"DEAR SIR:--Fraught with the feelings of a friend who is doubtless
beyond your conception interested in your health and happiness, I take
liberty to address you with a frankness which nothing but the purest
friendship and affection can palliate,--know, then, that the charms I
first read on your visage brought a passion into my bosom for which I
could not account. If it was from the thing called LOVE, I was before
mostly ignorant of it, and strove to stifle the fugutive; though I
confess the indulgence was agreeable. But repeated interviews with you
kindled it into a flame I do not now blush to own: and should it meet a
generous return, I shall not reproach myself for its indulgence. I have
long sought to