Open unto her ! '' cried he . In a moment his mother was kneeling by the bedside ; she drew Ilbrahim to her bosom , and he nestled there with no violence of joy , but contentedly as if he were hushing himself to sleep . He looked into her face , and , reading its agony , said with feeble earnestness , `` Mourn not , dearest mother . I am happy now ; '' and with these words the gentle boy was dead . * * * * * The king 's mandate to stay the New England persecutors was effectual in preventing further martyrdoms , but the colonial authorities , trusting in the remoteness of their situation , and perhaps in the supposed instability of the royal government , shortly renewed their severities in all other respects . Catharine 's fanaticism had become wilder by the sundering of all human ties ; and wherever a scourge was lifted , there was she to receive the blow ; and whenever a dungeon was unbarred , thither she came to cast herself upon the floor . But in process of time a more Christian spirit -- a spirit of forbearance , though not of cordiality or approbation -- began to pervade the land in regard to the persecuted sect . And then , when the rigid old Pilgrims eyed her rather in pity than in wrath , when the matrons fed her with the fragments of their children 's food and offered her a lodging on a hard and lowly bed , when no little crowd of schoolboys left their sports to cast stones after the roving enthusiast , -- then did Catharine return to Pearson 's dwelling , and made that her home . As if Ilbrahim 's sweetness yet lingered round his ashes , as if his gentle spirit came down from heaven to teach his parent a true religion , her fierce and vindictive nature was softened by the same griefs which had once irritated it . When the course of years had made the features of the unobtrusive mourner familiar in the settlement , she became a subject of not deep but general interest -- a being on whom the otherwise superfluous sympathies of all might be bestowed . Every one spoke of her with that degree of pity which it is pleasant to experience ; every one was ready to do her the little kindnesses which are not costly , yet manifest good-will ; and when at last she died , a long train of her once bitter persecutors followed her with decent sadness and tears that were not painful to her place by Ilbrahim 's green and sunken grave . MR. HIGGINBOTHAM 'S CATASTROPHE . A young fellow , a tobacco-pedler by trade , was on his way from Morristown , where he had dealt largely with the deacon of the Shaker settlement , to the village of Parker 's Falls , on Salmon River . He had a neat little cart painted green , with a box of cigars depicted on each side-panel , and an Indian chief holding a pipe and a golden tobacco-stalk on the rear . The pedler drove a smart little mare and was a young man of excellent character , keen at a bargain , but none the worse liked by the Yankees , who , as I have heard them say , would rather be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one . Especially was he beloved by the pretty girls along the Connecticut , whose favor he used to court by presents of the best smoking-tobacco in his stock , knowing well that the country-lasses of New England are generally great performers on pipes . Moreover , as will be seen in the course of my story , the pedler was inquisitive and something of a tattler , always itching to hear the news and anxious to tell it again . After an early breakfast at Morristown the tobacco-pedler -- whose name was Dominicus Pike -- had travelled seven miles through a solitary piece of woods without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little gray mare . It being nearly seven o'clock , he was as eager to hold a morning gossip as a city shopkeeper to read the morning paper .
An opportunity seemed at hand when , after lighting a cigar with a sun-glass , he looked up and perceived a man coming over the brow of the hill XXXXX the foot of which the pedler had stopped his green cart .
as at from into of on than thither upon with