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 was not one who combined
innocence and misery like this poor broken-hearted infant so soon the
victim of his own heavenly nature.

While this melancholy change had taken place in Ilbrahim, one of an
earlier origin and of different character had come to its perfection
in his adopted father. The incident with which this tale commences
found Pearson in a state of religious dulness, yet mentally disquieted
and longing for a more fervid faith than he possessed. The first
effect of his kindness to Ilbrahim was to produce a softened feeling,
an incipient love for the child's whole sect, but joined to this, and
resulting, perhaps, from self-suspicion, was a proud and ostentatious
contempt of their tenets and practical extravagances. In the course of
much thought, however--for the subject struggled irresistibly into his
mind--the foolishness of the doctrine began to be less evident, and
the points which had particularly offended his reason assumed another
aspect or vanished entirely away. The work within him appeared to go
on even while he slept, and that which had been a doubt when he laid
down to rest would often hold the place of a truth confirmed by some