The king's mandate to stay the New England persecutors was
effectual in preventing further martyrdoms; but the colonial
authorities, trusting in the remoteness of their situation, and
perhaps in the supposed instability of the royal government,
shortly renewed their severities in all other respects.
Catharine's fanaticism had become wilder by the sundering of all
human ties; and wherever a scourge was lifted there was she to
receive the blow, and whenever a dungeon was unbarred thither she
came, to cast herself upon the floor. But in process of time a
more Christian spirit --a spirit of forbearance, though not of
cordiality or approbation--began to pervade the land in regard to
the persecuted sect. And then, when the rigid old Pilgrims eyed
her rather in pity than in wrath; when the matrons fed her with
the fragments of their children's food, and offered her a lodging
on a hard and lowly bed; when no little crowd of schoolboys left
their sports to cast stones after the roving enthusiast; then did
Catharine return to Pearson's dwelling and made that her home.

As if Ilbrahim's sweetness yet lingered round his ashes; as if
his gentle spirit came down from heaven to teach his parent a
true religion, her fierce and vindictive nature was softened by
the same griefs which had once irritated it. When the course of
years had made the features of the unobtrusive mourner familiar
in the settlement, she became a subject of not deep, but general,
interest; a being on whom the otherwise superfluous sympathies of
all might be bestowed. Every one spoke of her with that degree of
pity which it is pleasant to experience; every one was ready to
do her the little kindnesses which are not costly, yet manifest
good will and when at last she died, a long train of her once
bitter persecutors followed her, with decent sadness and tears