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