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.

On one side of the river, at the foot of the East Ridge, stood Rockhold, the country seat of the Rockharrts, in its own park, which lay between the mountain and the river.  The house itself was a large, heavy, oblong building of gray stone, two stories high, with cellar and garret.  From the front of the house to the edge of the river extended a fair green lawn, shaded here and there by great forest trees.  Under many of these trees, tables with refreshments were set, and seats were placed for the accommodation and refreshment of the out-door guests.  In sunny spots, also, some white tents were raised and decorated with flags.

As a group of working men and women sat on the west bank of the river, waiting impatiently for the return of the ferryboat, they saw, from minute to minute, carriages drive up the lawn avenue, discharge the occupants at the main entrance of the house, and then roll off to the stable yard in the rear.

These seemed to come in a slow procession.

“Only the nearest relations and most intimate friends of the family are invited to the ceremony.  There have only been five carriages passed since we have been sitting here, and I don’t believe there was one come before we came, or that there’ll be another come after that last one, which was certainly the groom’s,” said Old Marwig.

“Oh! was it, indeed?  But how do you know?” demanded Mrs. Bounce.