body.  There was besides a strain of romance and adventure in his blood.  By nature and his seafaring life he probably craved strong excitement.  This craving was in part appeased no doubt by travel and drink.  He took to the sea and he took to the cup.  But he was more than a creature of appetites, he was a man of sentiment.  Being a man of sentiment what should he do but fall in love.  The woman who inspired his love was no ordinary woman, but a genuine Acadian beauty.  She was a splendid specimen of womankind.  Tall she was, graceful and admirably proportioned.  Never before had Abijah in all his wanderings seen a creature of such charms of person.  Her face matched the attractions of her form and her mind matched the beauty of her face.  She possessed a nature almost Puritanic in its abhorrence of sin, and in the strength of its moral convictions.  She feared to do wrong more than she feared any man.  With this supremacy of the moral sense there went along singular firmness of purpose and independence of character.  When a mere slip of a girl she was called upon to choose between regard for her religious convictions and regard for her family.  It happened in this wise.  Fanny Lloyd’s parents were Episcopalians, who were inclined to view with contempt fellow-Christians of the Baptist persuasion.  To have a child of theirs identify herself with this despised sect was one of those crosses which they could not and would not bear.  But Fanny had in a fit of girlish frolic entered one of the meetings of these low-caste Christians.  What she heard changed the current of her life.  She knew thenceforth that God was no respecter of persons, and that the crucified Nazarene looked not upon the splendor of ceremonies but upon the thoughts of the heart of His disciples.  Here in a barn, amid vulgar folk, and uncouth, dim surroundings, He had appeared, He, her Lord and Master.  He had touched her with that white unspeakable appeal.  The laughter died upon the fair girlish face and prayer issued from the beautiful lips.  If vulgar folk, the despised Baptists, were good enough for the Christ, were they not good enough for her?  Among them she had felt His consecrating touch and among them she determined to devote herself to Him.  Her parents commanded and threatened but Fanny Lloyd was bent on obeying the heavenly voice of duty rather than father and mother.  They had threatened that if she allowed herself to be baptised they would turn her out of doors.  Fanny was baptised and her parents made good the threat.  Their home was no longer her home.  She had the courage of her conviction—­ability to suffer for a belief.