endeavored to be the medium of all the cares that were bestowed
upon him. As the boy became convalescent, Ilbrahim contrived
games suitable to his situation, or amused him by a faculty which
he had perhaps breathed in with the air of his barbaric
birthplace. It was that of reciting imaginary adventures, on the
spur of the moment, and apparently in inexhaustible succession.
His tales were of course monstrous, disjointed, and without aim;
but they were curious on account of a vein of human tenderness
which ran through them all, and was like a sweet, familiar face,
encountered in the midst of wild and unearthly scenery. The
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