He then addressed Dorothy with his usual sweetness and besought her to draw near him ; she did so , and Ilbrahim took her hand in both of his , grasping it with a gentle pressure , as if to assure himself that he retained it . At intervals , and without disturbing the repose of his countenance , a very faint trembling passed over him from head to foot , as if a mild but somewhat cool wind had breathed upon him and made him shiver . As the boy thus led her by the hand in his quiet progress over the borders of eternity , Dorothy almost imagined that she could discern the near though dim delightfulness of the home he was about to reach ; she would not have enticed the little wanderer back , though she bemoaned herself that she must leave him and return . But just when Ilbrahim 's feet were pressing on the soil of Paradise he heard a voice behind him , and it recalled him a few , few paces of the weary path which he had travelled . As Dorothy looked upon his features she perceived that their placid expression was again disturbed . Her own thoughts had been so wrapped in him that all sounds of the storm and of human speech were lost to her ; but when Catharine 's shriek pierced through the room , the boy strove to raise himself . `` Friend , she is come ! 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 XXXXX 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 .
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