e, "Fear not, Ilbrahim, come hither and take my hand";
and his unhappy friend endeavored to obey him. After watching the
victim's struggling approach with a calm smile and unabashed eye, the
foul-hearted little villain lifted his staff, and struck Ilbrahim on the
mouth, so forcibly that the blood issued in a stream. The poor child's
arms had been raised to guard his head from the storm of blows; but now
he dropped them at once. His persecutors beat him down, trampled upon
him, dragged him by his long, fair locks, and Ilbrahim was on the point
of becoming as veritable a martyr as ever entered bleeding into heaven.
The uproar, however, attracted the notice of a few neighbors, who put
themselves to the trouble of rescuing the little heretic, and of
conveying him to Pearson's door.

Ilbrahim's bodily harm was severe, but long and careful nursing
accomplished his recovery; the injury done to his sensitive spirit was
more serious, though not so visible. Its signs were principally of a
negative character, and to be discovered only by those who had
previously known him. His gait was thenceforth slow, even, and unvaried
by the sudden bursts of sprightlier motion, which had once corresponded
to his overflowing gladness; his countenance was heavier, and its former
play of expression, the dance of sunshine reflected from moving water,
was destroyed by the cloud over his existence; his notice was attracted
in a far less degree by passing events, and he appeared to find greater
difficulty in comprehending what was new to him, than at a happier
period. A stranger, founding his judgment upon these circumstances,
would have said that the dulness of the child's intellect widely
contradicted the promise of his features; but the secret was in the
direction of Ilbrahim's thoughts, which were brooding within him when
they should naturally have been wandering abroad. An attempt of Dorothy
to revive his former sportiveness was the single occasion on which his
quiet demeanor yielded to a violent display of grief; he burst into
passionate weeping, and ran and hid himself, for his heart had become so
miserably sore that even the hand of kindness tortured it like fire.
Sometimes, at night and probably in his dreams, he was heard to cry,
"Mother! mother!" as if her place, which a stranger had supplied while
Ilbrahim was happy, admitted of no substitute in his extreme affliction.
Perhaps, among the many life-weary wretches then upon the earth, there