hair of my head, nor to
stay my footsteps even for a moment. The day is coming when ye shall
call upon me to witness for ye to this one sin uncommitted, and I will
rise up and answer."

She turned her steps toward the door, and the men, who had stationed
themselves to guard it, withdrew, and suffered her to pass. A general
sentiment of pity overcame the virulence of religious hatred.
Sanctified by her love and her affliction, she went forth, and all the
people gazed after her till she had journeyed up the hill, and was lost
behind its brow. She went, the apostle of her own unquiet heart, to
renew the wanderings of past years. For her voice had been already heard
in many lands of Christendom; and she had pined in the cells of a
Catholic Inquisition before she felt the lash and lay in the dungeons of
the Puritans. Her mission had extended also to the followers of the
Prophet, and from them she had received the courtesy and kindness which
all the contending sects of our purer religion united to deny her. Her
husband and herself had resided many months in Turkey, where even the
Sultan's countenance was gracious to them; in that pagan land, too, was
Ilbrahim's birthplace, and his Oriental name was a mark of gratitude for
the good deeds of an unbeliever.

* * * * *

When Pearson and his wife had thus acquired all the rights over Ilbrahim
that could be delegated, their affection for him became, like the memory
of their native land, or their mild sorrow for the dead, a piece of the
immovable furniture of their hearts. The boy, also, after a week or two
of mental disquiet, began to gratify his protectors, by many inadvertent
proofs that he considered them as parents, and their house as home.
Before the winter snows were melted, the persecuted infant, the little
wanderer from a remote and heathen country, seemed native in the New
England cottage, and inseparable from the warmth and security of its
hearth. Under the influence of kind treatment, and in the consciousness
that he was loved, Ilbrahim's demeanor lost a premature manliness which
had resulted from his earlier situation; he became more childlike, and
his natural character displayed itself with freedom. It was in many
respects a beautiful one, yet the disordered imaginations of both his
father and mother had perhaps propagated a certain unhealthiness in the
mind of the boy. In his general state, Ilbrahim would derive enjoyment
from the mos