"Let me in! let me in! Quick! quick!" he exclaimed, almost breathless from terror and fatigue. "Who are you, that come to disturb a lone woman at this hour of the night?" cried a sharp voice from above. "Begone about your business, and let quiet people sleep." "Oh, _diable, diable_! Come down and let me in! I am your husband. Don't you know my voice? Quick, I beseech you; for I am dying here in the street!" After a few moments of delay and a few more words of parley, the door was opened, and the notary stalked into his domicile, pale and haggard in aspect, and as stiff and straight as a ghost. Cased from head to heel in an armor of ice, as the glare of the lamp fell upon him he looked like a knight-errant mailed in steel. But in one place his armor was broken. On his right side was a circular spot as large as the crown of your hat, and about as black! "My dear wife!" he exclaimed, with more tenderness than he had exhibited for many years, "reach me a chair. My hours are numbered. I am a dead man!" Alarmed at these exclamations, his wife stripped off his overcoat. Something fell from beneath it, and was dashed to pieces on the hearth. It was the notary's pipe. He placed his hand upon his side, and lo! it was bare to the skin. Coat, waistcoat, and linen were burnt through and through, and there was a blister on his side as large over as your head! The mystery was soon explained, symptom and all. The notary had put his pipe into his pocket without knocking out the ashes! And so my story ends. "Is that all?" asked the radical, when the story-teller had finished. "That is all." "Well, what does your story prove?" "That is more than I can tell. All I know is that the story is true." "And did he die?" said the nice little man in gosling-green. "Yes; he died afterward," replied the story-teller, rather annoyed at the question. "And what did he die of?" continued gosling-green, following him up. "What did he die of? why, he died--of a sudden!" THE WIDOW'S CRUISE By F. R. STOCKTON "From a Story-Teller's Pack." Copyright 1897 by Charles Scribner's Sons. The widow Ducket lived in a small village about ten miles from the New Jersey seacoast. In this village she was born, here she had married and buried her husband, and here she expected somebody to bury her; but she was in no hurry for this, for she had scarcely reached middle age. She was a tall woman with no apparent fat in her composition, and full of activity, both muscular and mental.