As there was nothing in the statutes of Connecticut which made the holding of such a school as that of Miss Crandall's illegal, the good Canterbury folk procured the passage of a hasty act through the Legislature, which was then in session, "making it a penal offence, punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any one in that State keeping a school to take as his or her pupils the children of colored people of other States." But the heart of the young Quaker woman was the heart of a heroine. She dared to disregard the wicked law, was arrested, bound over for trial, and sent to jail like a common malefactor. It was no use, persecution could not cow the noble prisoner into submission to the infamous statute. In her emergency truth raised up friends who rallied about her in the unparalleled contest which raged around her person and her school. There was no meanness or maliciousness to which her enemies did not stoop to crush and ruin her and her cause. "The newspapers of the county and of the adjoining counties teemed with the grossest misrepresentations, and the vilest insinuations," says Mr. May, "against Miss Crandall, her pupils, and her patrons; but for the most part, peremptorily refused us any room in their columns to explain our principles and purposes, or to refute the slanders they were circulating." Four or five times within two years she was forced into court to defend her acts against the determined malignity of men who stood high in the Connecticut Church and State. The shops in the town boycotted her, the churches closed their doors to her and her pupils. Public conveyances refused to receive them, and physicians to prescribe for them. It is said that the heroic soul was cut off from intercourse with her own family, in the hope doubtless that she would the sooner capitulate to the negro-hating sentiment of her neighbors. But firm in her resolve the fair Castellan never thought of surrendering the citadel of her conscience at the bidding of iniquitous power. Then, like savages, her foes defiled with the excrement of cattle the well whence the school drew its supply of water, attacked the house with rotten eggs and stones, and daubed it with filth. This drama of diabolism was fitly ended by the introduction of the fire fiend, and the burning of the detestable building devoted to the higher education of "niggers." Heathenism was, indeed, outdone by Canterbury Christianity.