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. Early after the Restoration, the English Quakers represented to Charles II. that a 'vein of blood was open in his dominions;' but though the displeasure of the voluptuous king was roused, his interference was not prompt. And now the tale must stride forward over many months, leaving Pearson to encounter ignominy and misfortune; his wife to a firm endurance of a thousand sorrows; poor Ilbrahim to pine and droop like a cankered rose-bud; his mother to wander on a mistaken errand, neglectful of the holiest trust which can be committed to a woman.
*****
A winter evening, a night of storm, had darkened over Pearson's habitation, and there were no cheerful faces to drive the gloom from his broad hearth. The fire, it is true, sent forth a glowing heat and a ruddy light, and large logs, dripping with half-melted snow, lay ready to be cast upon the embers. But the apart-
