dull-featured piece of humanity, who,
after ascertaining that his master was the applicant, undid the door,
and held a flaring pine-knot torch to light him in. Further back in the
passageway, the red blaze discovered a matronly woman, but no little
crowd of children came bounding forth to greet their father's return. As
the Puritan entered, he thrust aside his cloak, and displayed Ilbrahim's
face to the female.

"Dorothy, here is a little outcast whom Providence hath put into our
hands," observed he. "Be kind to him, even as if he were of those dear
ones who have departed from us."

"What pale and bright-eyed little boy is this, Tobias?" she inquired.
"Is he one whom the wilderness folk have ravished from some Christian
mother?"

"No, Dorothy, this poor child is no captive from the wilderness," he
replied. "The heathen savage would have given him to eat of his scanty
morsel, and to drink of his birchen cup; but Christian men, alas! had
cast him out to die."

Then he told her how he had found him beneath the gallows, upon his
father's grave; and how his heart had prompted him, like the speaking of
an inward voice, to take the little outcast home, and be kind unto him.
He acknowledged his resolution to feed and clothe him, as if he were his
own child, and to afford him the instruction which should counteract the
pernicious errors hitherto instilled into his infant mind. Dorothy was
gifted with even a quicker tenderness than her husband, and she approved
of all his doings and intentions.

"Have you a mother, dear child?" she inquired.

The tears burst forth from his full heart, as he attempted to reply; but
Dorothy at length understood that he had a mother, who, like the rest of
her sect, was a persecuted wanderer. She had been taken from the prison
a short time before, carried into the uninhabited wilderness, and left
to perish there by hunger or wild beasts. This was no uncommon method of
disposing of the Quakers, and they were accustomed to boast, that the
inhabitants of the desert were more hospitable to them than civilized
man.

"Fear not, little boy, you shall not need a mother, and a kind one,"
said Dorothy, when she had gathered this information. "Dry your tears,
Ilbrahim, and be my child, as I will be your mother."

The good woman prepared the little bed, from which her own children had
successively been borne to another resting-place. Before Ilbrahim would
consent to occupy it, he knelt down, and as Do