The fatigue and heat of the march oppressed the girl soldier more than did battle or the fear of death. Yet at White Plains, her first experience of actual warfare, her left-hand man was shot dead in the second fire, and she herself received two shots through her coat and one through her cap. In the terrible bayonet charge at this same battle, in which she was a participant, the sight of the bloodshed proved almost too much for her strength. At Yorktown she was ordered to work on a battery, which she did right faithfully. Among her comrades, Deborah's young and jaunty appearance won for her the sobriquet "blooming boy." She was a great favourite in the ranks. She shirked nothing, and did duty sometimes as a common soldier and sometimes as a sergeant 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: