answered Dorothy. "If your child become our
child, we must breed him up in the instruction which Heaven has imparted
to us; we must pray for him the prayers of our own faith; we must do
toward him according to the dictates of our own consciences, and not of
yours. Were we to act otherwise, we should abuse your trust, even in
complying with your wishes."

The mother looked down upon her boy with a troubled countenance, and
then turned her eyes upward to Heaven. She seemed to pray internally,
and the contention of her soul was evident.

"Friend," she said at length to Dorothy, "I doubt not that my son shall
receive all earthly tenderness at thy hands. Nay, I will believe that
even thy imperfect lights may guide him to a better world; for surely
thou art on the path thither. But thou hast spoken of a husband. Doth he
stand here among this multitude of people? Let him come forth, for I
must know to whom I commit this most precious trust."

She turned her face upon the male auditors, and after a momentary delay,
Tobias Pearson came forth from among them. The Quaker saw the dress
which marked his military rank, and shook her head; but then she noted
the hesitating air, the eyes that struggled with her own, and were
vanquished; the color that went and came, and could find no
resting-place. As she gazed, an unmirthful smile spread over her
features, like sunshine that grows melancholy in some desolate spot.
Her lips moved inaudibly, but at length she spake.

"I hear it, I hear it. The voice speaketh within me and saith, 'Leave
thy child, Catharine, for his place is here, and go hence, for I have
other work for thee. Break the bonds of natural affection, martyr thy
love, and know that in all these things eternal wisdom hath its ends.' I
go, friends, I go. Take ye my boy, my precious jewel. I go hence,
trusting that all shall be well, and that even for his infant hands
there is a labor in the vineyard."

She knelt down and whispered to Ilbrahim, who at first struggled and
clung to his mother, with sobs and tears, but remained passive when she
had kissed his cheek and arisen from the ground. Having held her hands
over his head in mental prayer, she was ready to depart.

"Farewell, friends in mine extremity," she said to Pearson and his wife;
"the good deed ye have done me is a treasure laid up in Heaven, to be
returned a thousand-fold hereafter. And farewell ye, mine enemies, to
whom it is not permitted to harm so much as a