the possible result; others declared that she was committing a great
impropriety to shut herself up every Sunday with two old men. This,
Angelina informed them, was a mistake, as the windows and doors were
wide open, and the gate also. Others of her friends assured her with
tears in their eyes that they would pray to the Lord to bring her back
to the path of duty she had forsaken.

The superintendent of the Sunday-school came also to plead with her, in
the name of the children she was abandoning. Some of the scholars
themselves came and implored her not to leave them.

"But," she writes, "none of these things turn me a hair's breadth, for
I have the witness in myself that I have done as the Master commanded.
Some tell me this is a judgment on me for sin committed; and some say
it is a chastisement to Mr. McDowell for going away last summer."

(During the prevalence of an epidemic the summer before, the
Presbyterian pastor had been much blamed for deserting his flock and
fleeing to the sea-shore until all danger was past.)

By all this it will be seen that Angelina was regarded as too precious
a jewel in the crown of the Church to be relinquished without a
struggle.

But satisfied as was her conscience, Angelina's natural feelings could
not be immediately stifled. Though not so sensitive or so affectionate
as Sarah, she was quite as proud, and valued as greatly the good
opinion of her family and friends. She could not feel herself an
outcast, an object of pity and derision, without being deeply affected
by it. Her health gave way under the pressure, and a change of scene