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 forgotten demonstration when he recalled his
thoughts in the morning. But, while he was thus becoming assimilated to the
enthusiasts, his contempt, in nowise decreasing toward them, grew very fierce
against himself; he imagined, also, that every face of his acquaintance wore a
sneer, and that every word addressed to him was a gibe. Such was his state of
mind at the period of Ilbrahim's misfortune, and the emotions consequent upon
that event completed the change of which the child had been the original
instrument.
In the mean time, neither the fierceness of the persecutors nor the infatuation
of their victims had decreased. The dungeons were never empty; the streets of
almost every village echoed daily with the lash; the life of a woman whose mild
and Christian spirit no cruelty could embitter had been sacrificed, and more
innocent blood was yet to pollute the hands that were so often raised in prayer.