Her sleeves were short of her dimpled elbows, and her skirt reached scarce below her knees. Her graceful legs were bare, but her little feet were incased in neat, cow-hide moccasins with the hair on, laced and thonged about her round ankles.
A great measure of the girl's physical beauty had been transmitted by her mother, who had been a gentle blue-grass woman, of noted beauty and lineage, and who had in a fit of pique, married the picturesque trapper of the Cumberlands and buried herself in her unloved husband's wilderness existence.
Many pathetic tales were told of the great-hearted Tom-John Benson's patient struggle to make his wife happy; but the most beautiful woman the mountain people had ever seen had pined away and had gone to an early end.
Belle-Ann's father now worked for a lumber company, down on the Big Sandy. It was only now that he had saved sufficient money to send Belle-Ann to the mission school at Proctor, and so fulfil his wife's last request.
Belle-Ann had heard the news only three hours ago.
Jutt Orlick, returning from one of his mysterious, periodical visits abroad, had stopped to say that her father had sent word that he would come for her the following week and take her to the school at Proctor. And Orlick, whom the girl distrusted, had not departed without the usual flattery she always half resented.
As Belle-Ann sat on the horse-block her little heart was prey to many emotions, and she was well-nigh reduced to tears.
Impatient to tell the tidings, she was waiting for the boys, who had been away since early morning, and for the old man to come down from his lofty station. From the cabin door a vague, lank shape came toward her through the shadows.
"Yo', Slab!" she called.
"Heah me!" responded an old treble voice from the dappled path.