"'And I presume you made my bed some time during the day?'
"'Of course I did.'
"'Did it look as if it had been slep in?'
"'Yes.'
"'So that you see, my dear landlady,' he said, grinning at me, 'that it wasn't possible for me to have murdered the girl.'
"'Who said you did it?' I asked, starting back, for he had come close to me, and I thought he was going to touch me ag'in.
"'You didn't say so,' he said, 'but you thought so. It was wrote in your face, as I told you a minute ago. It is women like you who would put a man's life in danger, and think no more of it than snuffing a candle.'
"He didn't remain with me much longer, but went up to his room. He was right in what he said he saw wrote in my face while he was smoothing my hair; an idea had entered my head that it was him who had killed the poor girl. I think him bad enough for anything; there's nothing wicked I wouldn't believe of him. But of course it wasn't possible for him to have done it; and I thought with thankfulness it wasn't possible for Lemon to have done it, for he never stirred out of the house that night. It was what Lemon said in his sleep that made me tremble and shiver. Why, sir, he spoke of the murder before it was done! It says in the papers that when the poor girl was found she had been dead hours, and the doctor fixes it that she must have been murdered between two and three o'clock in the morning. And two hours and a half before she was murdered Lemon was raving in his sleep and telling all about it! How did he know, sir? how did he know?
"If it had been a ordinary case--if Lemon had only spoke in his sleep about some murder or other, and I'd read the next day that a murder had been committed that night, it would have been strange, but nothing so very much out of the way. Our minds sometimes runs on dreadful things, enough to give one the creeps, and we ain't accountable for everything we say when we're asleep. But Lemon said Victoria Park, and it was done in Victoria Park. He said eighteen years, and that was jest her age. He said golden hair, and she had golden hair. He said a bunch of white daisies, and she wore a bunch of white daisies. He said blood on 'em, and there was blood on 'em. He said stabbed to the heart, and she was stabbed to the heart!
"I'll tell you, sir, what come to me, and made me feel almost like a murderess. It was that if I'd really known what was going to happen when I heard Lemon talking in his sleep, I might have saved the life of that poor girl. But how was it possible for me to know? Still, that didn't prevent me feeling like a guilty woman.