“In a doleful hour art thou returned to me, poor boy,” she said, “for thy mother’s path has gone darkening onward, till now the end is death.  Son, son, I have borne thee in my arms when my limbs were tottering, and I have fed thee with the food that I was fainting for; yet I have ill-performed a mother’s part by thee in life, and now I leave thee no inheritance but woe and shame.  Thou wilt go seeking through the world, and find all hearts closed against thee and their sweet affections turned to bitterness for my sake.  My child, my child, how many a pang awaits thy gentle spirit, and I the cause of all!”

She hid her face on Ilbrahim’s head, and her long raven hair, discolored with the ashes of her mourning, fell down about him like a veil.  A low and interrupted moan was the voice of her heart’s anguish, and it did not fail to move the sympathies of many who mistook their involuntary virtue for a sin.  Sobs were audible in the female section of the house, and every man who was a father drew his hand across his eyes.

Tobias Pearson was agitated and uneasy, but a certain feeling like the consciousness of guilt oppressed him; so that he could not go forth and offer himself as the protector of the child.  Dorothy, however, had watched her husband’s eye.  Her mind was free from the influence that had begun to work on his, and she drew near the Quaker woman and addressed her in the hearing of all the congregation.

“Stranger, trust this boy to me, and I will be his mother,” she said, taking Ilbrahim’s hand.  “Providence has signally marked out my husband to protect him, and he has fed at our table and lodged under our roof now many days, till our hearts have grown very strongly unto him.  Leave the tender child with us, and be at ease concerning his welfare.”

The Quaker rose from the ground, but drew the boy closer to her, while she gazed earnestly in Dorothy’s face.  Her mild but saddened features and neat matronly attire harmonized together and were like a verse of fireside poetry.  Her very aspect proved that she was blameless, so far as mortal could be so, in respect to God and man, while the enthusiast, in her robe of sackcloth and girdle of knotted cord, had as evidently violated the duties of the present life and the future by fixing her attention wholly on the latter.  The two females, as they held each a hand of Ilbrahim, formed a practical allegory:  it was rational piety and unbridled fanaticism contending for the empire of a young heart.

“Thou art not of our people,” said the Quaker, mournfully.

“No, we are not of your people,” replied Dorothy, with mildness, “but we are Christians looking upward to the same heaven with you.  Doubt not that your boy shall meet you there, if there be a blessing on our tender and prayerful guidance of him.  Thither, I trust, my own children have gone before me, for I also have been a mother.  I am no longer so,” she added, in a faltering tone, “and your son will have all my care.”