On the 15th of June, 1882, was adopted a new adjustment with the Trustees. Mr. Cocke was still unwilling to take over the property in payment of the Trustees' debt, but he had come to the conclusion that it might be wise to take a lease on it for fifteen years. To this the Trustees agreed, and the lease was duly written in favor of Charles L. Cocke and his son, Charles H. Cocke. At this time the debt due Mr. Cocke was $42,212, and by the terms of the contract, that sum might be increased to $50,000. An annual rental of $3,500 was to be due the Trustees, which was offset by the interest due on their $50,000 debt. In this arrangement the only right reserved by the Trustees was that of sanction of all improvements that might be undertaken during the period of the lease. On the very day when this agreement was written, Mr. Cocke submitted a plan for a Chapel. This was promptly approved by the Trustees. The work began, and soon the sacred edifice was an accomplished fact. A little later the open grates and hot air furnaces in the buildings were abolished in favor of steam heat. The limestone spring and the pump in the yard were abandoned to give place to a reservoir on the side of Tinker Mountain, which supplied running water on every floor. Needed philosophical and chemical apparatus were forthcoming, and a beautiful Art and Music hall was built on the site of Carvin's rock castle. Then followed a new and enlarged dining room with all its appurtenances. The Trustees acquiesced cheerfully in all these betterments, but they looked on the vast increase of their debt in a sort of helpless wonderment. How should they ever meet the huge obligation? While they forbore to put a check on this advance, they were sure that there could be only one way of ultimate settlement. In July, 1882, came the first great heartbreak his own household had ever known. His daughter, Rosa Pleasants Cocke, wife of the Rev. W. R. L. Smith, pastor of the First Baptist Church, Lynchburg, Virginia, passed to her dreamless sleep. She was young, beautiful, universally loved,--the fairest bloom of queenly womanhood. She left a little Edith, who, twenty months later, went to rest with her mother on the green hill near Hollins.