r, and it cried, "What shall be done to the
backslider? Lo! the scourge is knotted for him, even the whip of nine
cords, and every cord three knots." These insults irritated Pearson's
temper for the moment; they entered also into his heart, and became
imperceptible but powerful workers toward an end which his most secret
thought had not yet whispered.

* * * * *

On the second Sabbath after Ilbrahim became a member of their family,
Pearson and his wife deemed it proper that he should appear with them
at public worship. They had anticipated some opposition to this
measure from the boy, but he prepared himself in silence, and at the
appointed hour was clad in the new mourning-suit which Dorothy had
wrought for him. As the parish was then, and during many subsequent
years, unprovided with a bell, the signal for the commencement of
religious exercises was the beat of a drum. At the first sound of that
martial call to the place of holy and quiet thoughts Tobias and
Dorothy set forth, each holding a hand of little Ilbrahim, like two
parents linked together by the infant of their love. On their path
through the leafless woods they were overtaken by many persons of
their acquaintance, all of whom avoided them and passed by on the
other side; but a severer trial awaited their constancy when they had
descended the hill and drew near the pine-built and undecorated house
of prayer. Around the door, from which the drummer still sent forth
his thundering summons, was drawn up a formidable phalanx, including
several of the oldest members of the congregation, many of the
middle-aged and nearly all the younger males. Pearson found it
difficult to sustain their united and disapproving gaze, but Dorothy,
whose mind was differently circumstanced, merely drew the boy closer
to her and faltered not in her approach. As they entered the door they
overheard the muttered sentiments of the assemblage; and when the
reviling voices of the little children smote Ilbrahim's ear, he wept.

The interior aspect of the meeting-house was rude. The low ceiling,
the unplastered walls, the naked woodwork and the undraperied pulpit
offered nothing to excite the devotion which without such external
aids often remains latent in the heart. The floor of the building was
occupied by rows of long cushionless benches, supplying the place of
pews, and the broad aisle formed a sexual division impassable except
by children beneath a cer