"I remember Regulas Rothsay--or Rule, as we used to call him--when he
was a little bit of a fellow hardly up to my knee, running about
bare-footed and doing odd jobs round the foundry. Ah! and now he is
elected governor of this State by the biggest majority ever heard of,
and engaged to be married to the finest young lady in the country, with
the full consent of all her proud relations. To be married to-day and to
be inaugurated to-morrow, and he only thirty-two years old this blessed
seventh of June!"

The speaker, a hale man of sixty years, with a bald head, a sharp face,
a ruddy complexion, and a figure as twisted as a yew tree, and about as
tough, was Silas Marwig, one of the foremen of the foundry.

"Well, I don't believe Regulas Rothsay would ever have risen to his
present position if it had not been for his love of Corona Haught. No
more do I believe that Old Rockharrt would ever have allowed his
beautiful granddaughter to be engaged to Rothsay if the young man had
not been elected governor," observed a stout, florid-faced matron of
fifty-five. "How hard he worked for her! And how long she waited for
him! Why, I remember them both so well! They were the very best of
friends from their childhood--the wealthy little lady and the poor
orphan boy."

"That is very true, Mrs. Bounce," said a young man, who was a newcomer
in the neighborhood and one of the bookkeepers of the great firm. "But
how did that orphan get his education?"

"By hook and by crook, as the saying is, Mr. Wall. I think the little
lady taught him to read and write, and she loaned him books. He left