Belle-Ann was allotted a cozy little room with white enamel furniture, and pretty curtains, and quaint Japanese matting, the like of which had never met her admiring eyes. Withal, Belle-Ann was deeply pleased with her new surroundings--with the other scholars and with the teachers. But so much had been crowded into her young life of late, coupled with the pang of parting from her home, that it was days before her mood aroused itself to the necessity of application. When she did begin her lessons, it was with an assiduous energy and receptive aptitude that not only attracted the teachers, but the other pupils likewise. From the outset, she developed an inordinate thirst for grammar. Indeed, a great part of the time out of study hours, she carried her grammar about with her, peeping into it anon, spelling, repeating, and pondering over its phrases--never tiring of its dawning mysteries and vast possibilities. The Mission School, familiarly designated as the Chapel, was not an academic institution of classics and national renown, but it was of State-wide repute and an oasis of preparatory learning amidst the barren lives of mountain youth, hitherto isolated and deprived of the advantages of his more fortunate Blue-Grass cousins. Miss Virginia Worth, in charge of the Chapel, was as agreeably impressed with Belle-Ann as the girl was pleased with the charming teacher. Miss Worth was a woman of thirty-seven, with an abundance of perfectly white hair and the fresh, smooth face of a girl of twenty. Upon this benign, wholesome countenance there dwelt an ever-present sympathy and love for mankind. In her gray eyes was a look of succor that beckoned suffering to her. Oddly enough, a woman of private wealth, she had made the uplift of the mountain folk her life work. Moreover, Miss Worth was a woman of deep and unerring penetration,--of careful and soothing diplomacy--she had made a life study of the ways of the human heart. With true divinity, she had stepped out into the world, smiling, amidst the trivialities and dissensions, and weaknesses that assail and tempt and twist and scar the lives of humanity. In the fountain of her spontaneous Christian soul, she had a lotion for them all. From the first, it was this benevolent woman's smile that drew Belle-Ann to her--a look that reminded the girl keenly of Maw Lutts' perennial smile, and spread an aftermath that carried her back to days of utter happiness. Ill things of the soul are oft concealed through the measures of a lifetime. Thus, when its tenancy is predestined,--but when a spirit is unmated to evil, its odious residue gravitates like cork to the surface and speedily floats in the eyes.