Thus relieved of the shadow of an impending tragedy, the knots of men congregated on the great cliff gradually gave themselves up to the object of their meeting. Candidates of smiling mien circulated among the saturnine, grave-faced mountaineers. In circulation, too, were other genial spirits, familiarly known as "apple-jack." It was a great occasion for the store-keeper; so pressing and absorbing were his duties that he had not a moment's respite, until Mr. Slade, the first speaker of the day, mounted a stump in front of the store and began to address his fellow-citizens. He was a large, florid man, with a rotund voice and a smooth manner, and he was considered Chadd's most formidable competitor. The mountaineers hastily concentrated in a semicircle about him, listening with the close attention singularly characteristic of rural audiences. Behind the crowd was the immensity of the unpeopled forests; below, the mad fret of the cataract; above, the vast hemisphere of the lonely skies; and far, far away was the infinite stretching of those blue ranges that the Indians called The Endless.
Chadd had lain in a sort of stupor all the morning, vaguely conscious of the distant mountains visible through the open window,—vaguely conscious of numbers of curious faces that came to the door and gazed in upon him,—vaguely conscious of the candidate's voice beginning to resound in the noontide stillness. Then he roused himself.
The sensation of the first speech came at its close. As Chadd lay in expectation of the stentorian "Hurrah for Slade!" which should greet his opponent's peroration, his face flushed, his hands trembled; he lifted himself on his elbow, and listened again. He could hardly trust his senses, yet there it was once more,—his own name, vibrating in a prolonged cheer among the mountain heights, and echoing far down the narrow valley.
That sympathetic heart of the multitude, so quick to respond to a noble impulse, had caught the true interpretation of last night's scene, and to-day all the barriers of ignorance and misunderstanding were down.
The heaviest majority ever polled on Big Injun Mounting was in the reëlection of the attorney for the State. And the other candidates thought it a fine electioneering trick to get one's self artistically slashed; they became misanthropic in their views of the inconstancy of the people, and lost faith in saving grace and an overruling Providence.
This uncharacteristic episode in the life of Rufus Chadd was always incomprehensible to his associates. He hardly understood it himself. He had made a keen and subtle distinction in a high moral principle. As Abel Stubbs said, in extenuation of the inconsistency of voting for him, "I knows that this hyar Rufe Chadd air a powerful hard man, an' evil-doers ez offends agin the law ain't got no mercy ter expect from him. But then he don't hold no grudge agin them ez hev done him harm. An' that's what I'm a-lookin' at."
THE ROMANCE OF SUNRISE ROCK.
I.
What momentous morning arose with so resplendent a glory that it should have imprinted its indelible reflection on the face of this great Cumberland cliff; what eloquence of dawn so splendid that the dumb, insensate stone should catch its spirit and retain its expression forever and forever? A deep, narrow stream flowed around the base of the "paint-rock." Immense fissures separated it from its fellows. And charged with its subtler meaning it towered above them in isolated majesty. Moons waxed and waned; nations rose and fell; centuries came and went. And still it faced the east, and still, undimmed by storm and time, it reiterated the miracle and the prophecy of the rising sun.
"'Twar painted by the Injuns,—that's what I hev always hearn tell. Them folks war mos'ly leagued with the Evil One. That's how it kem they war gin the grasp ter scuffle up that thar bluff, ez air four hunderd feet high an' ez sheer ez a wall; it ain't got foothold fur a cockle-burr. I hev hearn tell that when they got ez high ez the pictur' they war 'lowed by the devil ter stand on air. An' I believes it. Else how'd they make out ter do that thar job?"