was answered by a bond-servant, a coarse-clad and dull-featured
piece of humanity, who, after ascertaining that his master was
the applicant, undid the door, and held a flaring pineknot torch
to light him in. Farther back in the passage-way, the red blaze
discovered a matronly woman, but no little crowd of children came
bounding forth to greet their father's return. As the Puritan
entered, he thrust aside his cloak, and displayed Ilbrahim's face
to the female.

"Dorothy, here is a little outcast, whom Providence hath put into
our hands," observed he. "Be kind to him, even as if he were of
those dear ones who have departed from us."

"What pale and bright-eyed little boy is this, Tobias?" she
inquired. "Is he one whom the wilderness folk have ravished from
some Christian mother?"

"No, Dorothy, this poor child is no captive from the wilderness,"
he replied. "The heathen savage would have given him to eat of
his scanty morsel, and to drink of his birchen cup; but Christian
men, alas, had cast him out to die."

Then he told her how he had found him beneath the gallows, upon
his father's grave; and how his heart had prompted him, like the
speaking of an inward voice, to take the little outcast home, and
be kind unto him. He acknowledged his resolution to feed and
clothe him, as if he were his own child, and to afford him the
instruction which should counteract the pernicious errors
hitherto instilled into his infant mind. Dorothy was gifted with
even a quicker tenderness than her husband, and she approved of