d carpet hid the floor; a
cheap rocking-chair in the act of moulting its upholstery spread
its luxurious arms invitingly near the dim window; and a table,
on which a pack of German playing cards was coyly half concealed
by a newspaper, a coal-hod, and a poker, completed the necessary
furnishing of the apartment.

The ornaments are soon inventoried; a certificate of membership
of the New York State Agricultural Society, given at Albany to
Mr. M. G. Bivins, hung in a cheap frame over the table. The other
decorations were a few prints of high-colored saints, an
engraving of a purple Virgin Mary with a pea-green child, and a
picture of a blue Joseph being sold by yellow brethren to a crowd
of scarlet merchants who were paying for him with money that
looked like peppermint lozenges.

Madame Widger, the "Mysterious Spanish Lady," was not at first
visible to the naked eye, but a loud, shrill, vicious voice,
which made itself heard through the partition dividing the
reception-room from some apartment as yet unexplored by them,
directed the attention of her visitors to her exact locality.

She was "engaged" with another gentleman, said the knight of the
ragged inexpressibles.

Had not what he had already seen of the mansion decidedly cooled
the passion of the love-lorn customer, this intelligence would
have been likely to rouse his ire against the interloping swain,
and make him pant for vengeance and fistic damages to the other
party; but in his present confused state of mind he received this
blow with philosophic indifference.

The old man subsided into a chair, and in a weak sort of way
began to talk, evidently with some insane idea of pleasingly
filling up the time until the prophetess should be disengaged.
His conversation seemed to run to disasters, with a particular
partiality to shipwrecks. He accordingly detailed, with wonderful
exactness, the perils encountered by a certain canal-boat of
his, "loaded principally with butter and cheese," during a
dangerous voyage from Albany to New York, and which was finally
brought safely to a secure harbor by the power of the Widger,
which circumstance had made him her slave for life.

The shrill voice then ceased, and the person to whom it had been
addressed came forth. The lime on his blue jean garments, and the
cloudy appearance of his boots, declared him to be something in
the mason line. He deported himself with becoming reverence, and
departed in apparent awe. He did