"Dear Miss ——:—Perhaps you are the nearest friend I have. But a few hours must inevitably waft me to an infinite distance from all sublunary enjoyments, and fix me in a state of changeless retribution. Three years having made me the sport of fortune, I am at length doomed to end my existence in a dreary wilderness, unattended except by an Indian boy. If you receive these lines, remember they come from one who sincerely loves you. But, my amiable friend, forgive my imperfections and forget you ever had affection for one so unworthy the name of
"Your Own Sex."
No means of sending this letter presented itself, however, and after a dreary wandering, Deborah was enabled to rejoin her soldier friends. Then she proceeded to Baltimore for the express purpose of seeing her girl admirer and telling her the truth. Yet this time, too, she evaded her duty, and left the maiden still unenlightened, with a promise to return the ensuing spring—a promise, she afterward declared, she had every intention of keeping, had not the truth been published to the world in the intervening time.
Doctor Bana had been only deferring the uncloaking of "Robert Shurtleff." Upon Deborah's return to duty, he made the culprit herself the bearer of a letter to General Patterson, which disclosed the secret.
GANNETT HOUSE, SHARON, MASS.
The general, who was at West Point at the time, treated her with all possible kindness, and commended her for her service, instead of punishing her, as she had feared. Then he gave her a private apartment, and made arrangements to have her safely conducted to Massachusetts.
Not quite yet, however, did Deborah abandon her disguise. She passed the next winter with distant relatives under the name of her youngest brother. But she soon resumed her proper name, and returned to her delighted family.
After the war, she married Benjamin Gannett, and the homestead in Sharon, where she lived for the rest of her life, is still standing, relics of her occupancy, her table and her Bible, being shown there to-day to interested visitors.
In 1802 she made a successful lecturing tour, during which she kept a very interesting diary, which is still exhibited to those interested by her great-granddaughter, Mrs. Susan Moody. Her grave in Sharon is carefully preserved, a street has been named in her honour, and several patriotic societies have constituted her their principal deity. Certainly her story is curious enough to entitle her to some distinction.