.
Leave the tender child with us, and be at ease concerning his
welfare."

The Quaker rose from the ground, but drew the boy closer to her, while
she gazed earnestly in Dorothy's face. Her mild but saddened features
and neat matronly attire harmonized together and were like a verse of
fireside poetry. Her very aspect proved that she was blameless, so far
as mortal could be so, in respect to God and man, while the
enthusiast, in her robe of sackcloth and girdle of knotted cord, had
as evidently violated the duties of the present life and the future by
fixing her attention wholly on the latter. The two females, as they
held each a hand of Ilbrahim, formed a practical allegory: it was
rational piety and unbridled fanaticism contending for the empire of a
young heart.

"Thou art not of our people," said the Quaker, mournfully.

"No, we are not of your people," replied Dorothy, with mildness, "but
we are Christians looking upward to the same heaven with you. Doubt
not that your boy shall meet you there, if there be a blessing on our
tender and prayerful guidance of him. Thither, I trust, my own
children have gone before me, for I also have been a mother. I am no
longer so," she added, in a faltering tone, "and your son will have
all my care."

"But will ye lead him in the path which his parents have trodden?"
demanded the Quaker. "Can ye teach him the enlightened faith which his
father has died for, and for which I--even I--am soon to become an
unworthy martyr? The boy has been baptized in blood; will ye keep the
mark fresh and ruddy upon his forehead?"

"I will not deceive you," answered Dorothy. "If your child become our
child, we must breed him up in the instruction which Heaven has
imparted to us; we must pray for him the prayers of our own faith; we
must do toward him according to the dictates of our own consciences,
and not of yours. Were we to act otherwise, we should abuse your
trust, even in complying with your wishes."

The mother looked down upon her boy with a troubled countenance, and
then turned her eyes upward to heaven. She seemed to pray internally,
and the contention of her soul was evident.

"Friend," she said, at length, to Dorothy, "I doubt not that my son
shall receive all earthly tenderness at thy hands. Nay, I will believe
that even thy imperfect lights may guide him to a better world, for
surely thou art on the path thither. But thou hast spoken of a
husband. Doth he stand here among this m