“Let me see.” And stretching out her hand with the utmost eagerness, she took the slip and turned it over. Instantly a change took place in her countenance. She sank back in her seat and a blush of manifest confusion suffused her cheeks. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “what will you think of me! I brought this scrap of print into the house _myself_ and it was _I_ who pinned it on the cushion with my own hands! I remember it now. The sight of those words recalls the whole occurrence.” “Then there is one mystery less for us to solve,” I remarked, somewhat dryly. “Do you think so,” she protested, with a deprecatory look. “For me the mystery deepens, and becomes every minute more serious. It is true that I brought this scrap of newspaper into the house, and that it had, then as now, the notice of my husband’s death upon it, but the time of my bringing it in was Tuesday night, and he was not found dead till Wednesday morning.” “A discrepancy worth noting,” I remarked. “Involving a mystery of some importance,” she concluded. I agreed to that. “And since we have discovered how the slip came into your room, we can now proceed to the clearing up of this mystery,” I observed. “You can, of course, inform me where you procured this clipping which you say you brought into the house?” “Yes. You may think it strange, but when I alighted from the carriage that night, a man on the sidewalk put this tiny scrap of paper into my hand. It was done so mechanically that it made no more impression on my mind than the thrusting of an advertisement upon me. Indeed, I supposed it was an advertisement, and I only wonder that I retained it in my hand at all. But that I did do so, and that, in a moment of abstraction I went so far as to pin it to my cushion, is evident from the fact that a vague memory remains in my mind of having read this recipe which you see printed on the reverse side of the paper.” “It was the recipe, then, and not the obituary notice which attracted your attention the night before?” “Probably, but in pinning it to the cushion, it was the obituary notice that chanced to come uppermost. Oh, why should I not have remembered this till now! Can you understand my forgetting a matter of so much importance?” “Yes,” I allowed, after a momentary consideration of her ingenuous countenance. “The words you read in the morning were so startling that they disconnected themselves from those you had carelessly glanced at the night before.” “That is it,” she replied; “and since then I have had eyes for the one side only. How could I think of the other? But who could have printed this thing and who was the man who put it into my hand? He looked like a beggar but--Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed, her cheeks flushing scarlet and her eyes flashing with a feverish, almost alarming, glitter. “What is it now?” I asked. “Another recollection?” “Yes.” She spoke so low I could hardly hear her. “He coughed and----”