"And now," observed Miss Worth, "is it right for Lem to kill the man?" pursued Miss Worth tentatively. Belle-Ann arose quickly from the bed, spurred by the thought that she now miraculously regarded as a two-edged wrong, and a direct offense against God. "Oh!" she exclaimed regretfully, "how could I ever have thought it right--how could I? It's ignorance--it's downright ignorance--I see it all plainly now, my deah, sweet, true friend. I see it all just as you-all promised me long ago that I would see it--instead of lightening Lem's sorrows I was adding to them--I was making his burden harder to endure--I was dragging him down to misery, not knowing any better--it's terrible, Miss Worth--it's pure blind ignorance--I can't believe now that I did that. I'm guilty--guilty--guilty--if Lem kills the revenuer, I, too, am guilty, for I will now tell you, Miss Worth, I not only asked Lem to kill the man, as I told you-all--but I demanded it against Lem's love for me--offered a prize--a reward for the revenuer's dead body. Lem begged to kiss me on parting--I wouldn't even kiss him good-by--he kissed my hair, not my lips--I can see him now standing up thah holding out his arms to me--I was mad for the sight of that officer, dead. If Lem kills him it will be I who helped to chain an anchor of crime to Lem's poor wretched life--to drag him down. I did nothing to uplift him,--nothing to incite him to look for bright things in the future--my whole heart was aflame with revenge. Oh! what a miserable thing it is! I was mad; weak-spirited; blind with ignorance--and to think that I boasted of it to you! As I stand heah now, I can't believe I did that monstrous thing. And Lem up thah, his eyes and thoughts fixed downward--down on the trail of revenge, a path that leads to eternal unhappiness. I can't wait, Miss Worth--I won't rest until I see Lem. I hope nothing has happened to him. I'll lead him out of it all. I'll show him the way to life as God meant us to live. I'll lead him out, just as you, my deahest, kindest friend--just as you have led me away from the pit around which I had beaten a path with all of my foolish years of life--you led me away from a seething pit of misery, Miss Worth; a cauldron into which I would surely have tumbled, soul and all, in time. Now--now--it's different; now--it's all changed--life looks like a beautiful picture to me now. But, oh!--how I pity the benighted sufferers up thah in the mountains--if there was only a way to show them--to show them the emoluments of life with the misery of feudal hate eliminated." Too much overcome with sheer joy to speak, Miss Worth listened to Belle-Ann's earnest declarations and watched her smiling, confident, beautiful features with a sense of having, just here, achieved one of the greatest conquests of her missionary life.