It was a glorious day in June. A long, deep, green valley lay low between two lofty ridges of the Cumberland mountains, running north and south for ten miles, and near the boundary lines of three States. This lovely vale was watered by a merry, sparkling little river called the Whirligig, which furnished the power for the huge machinery of the great firm of Rockharrt & Sons, proprietors of the Plutus iron mines and the North End foundries, which supplied the mighty engines on the great lines of railroad from the East to the West, and whose massive buildings, forges, furnaces, store-houses and laborers' cottages occupied all the ground between the foot of the mountain and the banks of the river, on both sides of the Whirligig, at the upper or north end of the valley, where a substantial bridge connected the two shores. This settlement, called, from its position, North End, was quite a thriving little village. North End was not only blessed with a mission church, having a schoolroom in its basement, but it was provided with a post-office, a telegraph, a drug store, kept by a regular physician, who dispensed his own physic (advice and medicine, one dollar), and a general store, where everything needed to eat, drink, wear or use (except drugs), was kept for sale. On this bright June morning, however, the great works were all stopped. There was a general holiday, and as this was at the cost of the firm, it gave general satisfaction. All the people of North End, except the aged, infirm and infantile, were trooping down the valley, on the rough road between the foot of the West Ridge and the side of the river, to a fete to be given them at Rockhold on the occasion of the marriage of old Aaron Rockharrt's granddaughter, Corona Haught, to Regulas Rothsay, the governor-elect of the State. It was a marriage of very rare interest to the workmen and their families. To the men, because the governor-elect had been one of their own class. The elders remembered him from the time when he was a friendless orphan child, glad to run the longest errand or do the hardest day's work for a dime, but also a very independent little fellow, who would take nothing in the shape of alms from anybody. To the women, because he was going to marry his first and only sweetheart, and on the very day before his inauguration, so that she might take part in the pageantry that was to be his first great success and triumph.