He had remained in England during the first years of the Civil War , in which he had borne some share as a cornet of dragoons under Cromwell . But when the ambitious designs of his leader began to develop themselves , he quitted the army of the Parliament and sought a refuge from the strife which was no longer holy among the people of his persuasion in the colony of Massachusetts . A more worldly consideration had perhaps an influence in drawing him thither , for New England offered advantages to men of unprosperous fortunes as well as to dissatisfied religionists , and Pearson had hitherto found it difficult to provide for a wife and increasing family . To this supposed impurity of motive the more bigoted Puritans were inclined to impute the removal by death of all the children for whose earthly good the father had been over-thoughtful . They had left their native country blooming like roses , and like roses they had perished in a foreign soil . Those expounders of the ways of Providence , who had thus judged their brother and attributed his domestic sorrows to his sin , were not more charitable when they saw him and Dorothy endeavoring to fill up the void in their hearts by the adoption of an infant of the accursed sect . Nor did they fail to communicate their disapprobation to Tobias , but the latter in reply merely pointed at the little quiet , lovely boy , whose appearance and deportment were indeed as powerful arguments as could possibly have been adduced in his own favor . Even his beauty , however , and his winning manners sometimes produced an effect ultimately unfavorable ; for the bigots , when the outer surfaces of their iron hearts had been softened and again grew hard , affirmed that no merely natural cause could have so worked upon them . Their antipathy to the poor infant was also increased by the ill-success of divers theological discussions in which it was attempted to convince him of the errors of his sect . Ilbrahim , it is true , was not a skilful controversialist , but the feeling of his religion was strong as instinct in him , and he could neither be enticed nor driven from the faith which his father had died for . The odium of this stubbornness was shared in a great measure by the child 's protectors , insomuch that Tobias and Dorothy very shortly began to experience a most bitter species of persecution in the cold regards of many a friend whom they had valued . The common people manifested their opinions more openly . Pearson was a man of some consideration , being a representative to the General Court and an approved lieutenant in the train-bands , yet within a week after his adoption of Ilbrahim he had been both hissed and hooted . Once , also , when walking through a solitary piece of woods , he heard a loud voice from some invisible speaker , 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 , XXXXX two parents linked together by the infant of their love .
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