succession. His tales were of course
monstrous, disjointed, and without aim; but they were curious on account
of a vein of human tenderness which ran through them all, and was like a
sweet, familiar face, encountered in the midst of wild and unearthly
scenery. The auditor paid much attention to these romances, and
sometimes interrupted them by brief remarks upon the incidents,
displaying shrewdness above his years, mingled with a moral obliquity
which grated very harshly against Ilbrahim's instinctive rectitude.
Nothing, however, could arrest the progress of the latter's affection,
and there were many proofs that it met with a response from the dark and
stubborn nature on which it was lavished. The boy's parents at length
removed him, to complete his cure under their own roof.

Ilbrahim did not visit his new friend after his departure; but he made
anxious and continual inquiries respecting him, and informed himself of
the day when he was to reappear among his playmates. On a pleasant
summer afternoon, the children of the neighborhood had assembled in the
little forest-crowned amphitheatre behind the meeting-house, and the
recovering invalid was there, leaning on a staff. The glee of a score of
untainted bosoms was heard in light and airy voices, which danced among
the trees like sunshine become audible; the grown men of this weary
world, as they journeyed by the spot, marvelled why life, beginning in
such brightness, should proceed in gloom; and their hearts, or their
imaginations, answered them and said, that the bliss of childhood gushes
from its innocence. But it happened that an unexpected addition was made
to the heavenly little band. It was Ilbrahim, who came toward the
children with a look of sweet confidence on his fair and spiritual face,
as if, having manifested his love to one of them, he had no longer to
fear a repulse from their society. A hush came over their mirth the
moment they beheld him, and they stood whispering to each other while he
drew nigh; but, all at once, the devil of their fathers entered into the
unbreeched fanatics, and sending up a fierce, shrill cry, they rushed
upon the poor Quaker child. In an instant, he was the centre of a brood
of baby-fiends, who lifted sticks against him, pelted him with stones,
and displayed an instinct of destruction far more loathsome than the
blood-thirstiness of manhood.

The invalid, in the meanwhile, stood apart from the tumult, crying out
with a loud voic