`` No , Dorothy ; this poor child is no captive from the wilderness , '' he replied . `` The heathen savage would have given him to eat of his scanty morsel and to drink of his birchen cup , but Christian men , alas ! had cast him out to die . '' Then he told her how he had found him beneath the gallows , upon his father 's grave , and how his heart had prompted him like the speaking of an inward voice to take the little outcast home and be kind unto him . He acknowledged his resolution to feed and clothe him as if he were his own child , and to afford him the instruction which should counteract the pernicious errors hitherto instilled into his infant mind . Dorothy was gifted with even a quicker tenderness than her husband , and she approved of all his doings and intentions . `` Have you a mother , dear child ? '' she inquired . The tears burst forth from his full heart as he attempted to reply , but Dorothy at length understood that he had a mother , who like the rest of her sect was a persecuted wanderer . She had been taken from the prison a short time before , carried into the uninhabited wilderness and left to perish there by hunger or wild beasts . This was no uncommon method of disposing of the Quakers , and they were accustomed to boast that the inhabitants of the desert were more hospitable to them than civilized man . `` Fear not , little boy ; you shall not need a mother , and a kind one , '' said Dorothy , when she had gathered this information . `` Dry your tears , Ilbrahim , and be my child , as I will be your mother . '' The good woman prepared the little bed from which her own children had successively been borne to another resting-place . Before Ilbrahim would consent to occupy it he knelt down , and as Dorothy listed to his simple and affecting prayer she marvelled how the parents that had taught it to him could have been judged worthy of death . When the boy had fallen asleep , she bent over his pale and spiritual countenance , pressed a kiss upon his white brow , drew the bedclothes up about his neck , and went away with a pensive gladness in her heart . Tobias Pearson was not among the earliest emigrants from the old country . 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 XXXXX 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 .
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