Here Marguerite cast another glance about the forlorn-looking chamber, and wondered how he had been able to pay the first quarter’s rent of her store. “He must have pinched himself to do it,” she thought to herself. “Oh! what other man in New York with only one suit of clothes would have been so generous?” And now, ere she withdrew, her feelings got the better of her judgment, and she burst into a fervent expression of thanks for his great benevolence and sympathy, and hoped that for her sake he had not deprived himself of money which he really needed. But Abel sharply interrupted her. “Do not talk thus,” he said, “if you have true faith in my Magic Nest. Poor I may seem, but I consider myself rich—ever so rich; a mountain of gold is within my reach. You ought to be convinced of it, yet still you doubt.” “Oh! no, no; I don’t doubt it for one moment,” answered Marguerite, very much confused. “Pray, sir, be not offended at my words—I forgot”; then, looking up in his face, “But I cannot help speaking what is in my heart. O sir! you are the dearest person to me in all the wide world.” “Well, come here some evening and play at solitaire with me,” said Abel in a milder tone. “But no, it won’t be solitaire with you—it will be two-handed euchre.” “Oh! I’ll come most willingly. True, I know nothing about cards, but you can teach me.” The girl now bade him adieu, and his parting words to her were: “I will inform you when I am ready to experiment with the live hen. But, remember, breathe not a syllable of it to any human being.” During the week which followed this visit to Abel Day’s den—as the other boarders called his room—Marguerite did not see her benefactor. But daily she looked for him, and he was seldom absent from her thoughts. He was so vastly unlike other people—the selfish, deceitful herd around her; loving solitude, yet evidently glad to have her with him; poor, yet calling himself rich; full of bright hopes, yet a prey to melancholy. His very singularities possessed a charm for the girl and made her long for his coming. “He brings me into quite another world,” she said; and while she was selling frogs (business at the Frog Emporium was increasing rapidly) Marguerite would indulge in pleasing reveries about good Abel Day. She almost hoped that his fortune might not come too soon. “Yes, I should like him to stay awhile longer in his humble home, so that I might have a chance to make it snug and cosey for him. We might pass happy days there together—happy days.” And every morning and evening she knelt before her crucifix and prayed for Abel.