"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me: Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me." I could say the first part of it quite easily, but some fiendish enemy seemed bent upon preventing my saying the last sentence, and in my terrible dream, rescue and safety depended upon my getting to the end of the text. I tried again and again, always to be driven back in despair before the crucial words were uttered. At last, with a desperate effort, I seemed to shake off the incubus which was weighing me down, and I finished the words triumphantly, and so loud that I had positively wakened myself up by shouting them out. With returning memory I knew this had happened, and hearing a door open and shut on the half landing below my room, I thought for the moment that someone must have heard me, and must be coming to see what was the matter. I looked at my watch—just two-thirty a.m. No one appeared; and to my relief I remembered that this was just the hour when either Miss Hunter or my friend went round to the invalids, giving them milk or bovril, in the night.
I had no inclination to seek out either of these ladies. The horror was past, and no one could undo what I had endured; so I lay quiet, and in course of time managed to go to sleep again, not waking until the servant came into my room to light the fire at seven-thirty a.m.
It happened to be a certain Minnie on this occasion, a very respectable young woman, who had accompanied Miss Hunter when she gave up the matronship of a well-known hospital, and who had therefore been with her since this establishment had been started.
My night's experience convinced me so absolutely that, in spite of all that had been said, the gentleman patient had died in this room, and that I had just gone through his death agonies, that instead of asking any question about it, I said very quietly to Minnie, as she was on her knees lighting my fire: "The poor gentleman who died here last summer died in this room, I find."
"Yes, ma'am," she said quietly, not knowing, as it turned out, that any mystery had been made about the fact.
My personal friend was guiltless of any deceit, for she had been told the story about Laura Pearce's room, but the young girls confessed when I went down to breakfast that they had been specially warned not to let me know the true facts.
Miss Hunter did not appear at breakfast, as she was suffering from a chill, so I went to her bedroom to say good-bye before going up to London.
Feeling naturally annoyed and rather shaken by my night's experience, I said to her rather drily:
"You need not have taken the trouble to deceive me about my room, Miss Hunter, nor to warn the girls to do the same. I know that gentleman died there, for I have just gone through his experiences." And then I told her about my terrible night.
Although forced to admit the facts, Miss Hunter fought every inch of the ground, so far as the painful experiences were concerned.