"Before you go, sir, if you have no objections. I sha'n't know how to thank you." "I will do what I can for you, Fanny. First for your own sake, and next because there appears to be something going on in this house that ought to be brought to light." "You may well say that, sir. Not only in this house, but out of this house. The good Lord above only knows what _is_ going on! But Lemon's done nothing wrong, sir. I won't have him thought badly of, and I won't have him hurt. He's been weak, yes, sir, but he ain't been guilty of a wicked, horrible crime. It ain't in his nature, sir. When I first begun to hear things that he used to say in his sleep, and sometimes when he was awake and lost to everything, my hair used to stand on end. I could feel it stirring up, giving me the creeps all over my skin, and my heart'd beat that quick that it was a mercy it didn't jump out of my body. But after a time, frightened as I was, and getting no satisfaction out of Lemon, who only glared at me when I spoke to him, I thought the time might come--and I ain't sure it won't be this blessed day--when I should have to come forward as a witness to save him from the gallows. I am his wife, sir, and if he ain't fit to look after hisself, it's for me to look after him, and so, sir, I thought the best thing for me to do was to keep a dairy." "A dairy!" I echoed, in wonder. "Yes, sir, a dairy--to put down in writing everything what happened at the very time." "O," I said, "you mean a diary!" "If that's what you call it, sir. I got an old lodger's book that wasn't all filled up. I keep it locked in my desk, sir. Perhaps you'd like to look at it?" "It may be as well, Fanny." "If," she said, fumbling in her pocket for a key, and placing one by one upon the table the most extraordinary collection of oddments that female pocket was ever called upon to hold, "if, when we come into this house to retire and live genteel, after Lemon had sold his business, I'd have known what was to come out of my notion to let the second floor front to a single man, I'd have had my feet cut off before I'd done it. But I did it for the best, to keep down the egspenses. Here it is, sir." CHAPTER VII. DEVLIN'S FIRST INTRODUCTION INTO THE MYSTERY.