child's protectors, insomuch that Tobias and Dorothy very shortly
began to experience a most bitter species of persecution in the cold
regards of many a friend whom they had valued. The common people
manifested their opinions more openly. Pearson was a man of some
consideration, being a representative to the General Court and an
approved lieutenant in the train-bands, yet within a week after his
adoption of Ilbrahim he had been both hissed and hooted. Once, also,
when walking through a solitary piece of woods, he heard a loud voice
from some invisible speaker, and it cried, "What shall be done to the
backslider? Lo! the scourge is knotted for him, even the whip of nine
cords, and every cord three knots." These insults irritated Pearson's
temper for the moment; they entered also into his heart, and became
imperceptible but powerful workers toward an end which his most secret
thought had not yet whispered.

* * * * *

On the second Sabbath after Ilbrahim became a member of their family,
Pearson and his wife deemed it proper that he should appear with them
at public worship. They had anticipated some opposition to this
measure from the boy, but he prepared himself in silence, and at the
appointed hour was clad in the new mourning-suit which Dorothy had
wrought for him. As the parish was then, and during many subsequent
years, unprovided with a bell, the signal for the commencement of
religious exercises was the beat of a drum. At the first sound of that
martial call to the place of holy and quiet thoughts Tobias and
Dorothy set forth, each holding a hand of little Ilbrahim, like two
parents linked together by the infant of their love. On their path
through the leafless woods they were overtaken by many persons of
their acquaintance, all of whom avoided them and passed by on the