Just as we were passing them we rounded a sharp turn in the road, and I saw another team coming from the opposite direction, right before us, not twenty feet off. I had no time to see more. When I regained consciousness, I was lying in bed in my room on Stockton Street, in San Francisco, my leg broken, three ribs fractured, and a terrible gash in my scalp, which extended half-way across my head. They said I had narrowly missed instant death, and it might—probably would—take me six months to recover. As good-fortune would have it, my old Spanish lady friend had seen me brought in, and was attending me assiduously.
"Then the fever came on, and for days I was raving in delirium, or tossing in distempered sleep, which brought no rest or relief. One day I was lying half asleep, half unconscious, with my head as it were on fire, and my ideas all distorted and confused by the fever-heat which ran through my brain like molten metal, when I felt, or fancied I felt, a cool, soft hand upon my burning forehead, and the touch of moist, velvety lips on mine. It was some seconds before I was fully awakened to consciousness; and then, when I turned my head painfully on my pillow, I saw that there was no one else in the room. I was sure that I could not have been wholly mistaken; and reaching the bell, I rang it for my kind volunteer nurse, who came at once.
"'There was somebody else in this room a moment since?' I said, with a positiveness I did not wholly feel, but with a determination to know the truth.
