ild have
drawn thine eyes and thy affections to the earth. Sister! go on
rejoicing, for his tottering footsteps shall impede thine own no more."

But the unhappy mother was not thus to be consoled; she shook like a
leaf, she turned white as the very snow that hung drifted into her hair.
The firm old man extended his hand and held her up, keeping his eye upon
hers, as if to repress any outbreak of passion.

"I am a woman, I am but a woman; will He try me above my strength?" said
Catharine very quickly, and almost in a whisper. "I have been wounded
sore; I have suffered much; many things in the body, many in the mind;
crucified in myself, and in them that were dearest to me. Surely," added
she, with a long shudder, "He hath spared me in this one thing." She
broke forth with sudden and irrepressible violence, "Tell me, man of
cold heart, what has God done to me? Hath he cast me down, never to rise
again? Hath he crushed my very heart in his hand? And thou, to whom I
committed my child, how hast thou fulfilled thy trust? Give me back the
boy, well, sound, alive, alive; or earth and Heaven shall avenge me!"

The agonized shriek of Catharine was answered by the faint, the very
faint voice of a child.

On this day it had become evident to Pearson, to his aged guest, and to
Dorothy that Ilbrahim's brief and troubled pilgrimage drew near its
close. The two former would willingly have remained by him, to make use
of the prayers and pious discourses which they deemed appropriate to the
time, and which, if they be impotent as to the departing traveller's
reception in the world whither it goes, may at least sustain him in
bidding adieu to earth. But though Ilbrahim uttered no complaint, he was
disturbed by the faces that looked upon him; so that Dorothy's
entreaties, and their own conviction that the child's feet might tread
heaven's pavement and not soil it, had induced the two Quakers to
remove. Ilbrahim then closed his eyes and grew calm, and, except for now
and then a kind and low word to his nurse, might have been thought to
slumber. As nightfall came on, however, and the storm began to rise,
something seemed to trouble the repose of the boy's mind, and to render
his sense of hearing active and acute. If a passing wind lingered to
shake the casement, he strove to turn his head toward it; if the door
jarred to and fro upon its hinges, he looked long and anxiously
thitherward; if the heavy voice of the old man, as he read the