wedged in at Johnny Spencer's side.

"I presume, sir, that you are canvassing for new desks," said Miss
Hender, with dignity. "You will have to see the supervisor and the
selectmen." There did not seem to be any need of his lingering, but
she had an ardent desire to be pleasing to a person of such evident
distinction. "We always tell strangers--I thought, sir, you might be
gratified to know--that this is the school-house where the Honorable
Joseph K. Laneway first attended school. All do not know that he was
born in this town, and went West very young; it is only about a mile
from here where his folks used to live."

At this moment the visitor's eyes fell. He did not look at pretty
Marilla any more, but opened Johnny Spencer's arithmetic, and, seeing
the imaginary portrait of the great General Laneway, laughed a
little,--a very deep-down comfortable laugh it was,--while Johnny
himself turned cold with alarm, he could not have told why.

It was very still in the school-room; the bee was buzzing and bumping
at the pane again; the moment was one of intense expectation.

The stranger looked at the children right and left. "The fact is
this, young people," said he, in a tone that was half pride and half
apology, "I am Joseph K. Laneway myself."

He tried to extricate himself from the narrow quarters of the desk,
but for an embarrassing moment found that he was stuck fast. Johnny
Spencer instinctively gave him an assisting push, and once free the
great soldier, statesman, and millionaire took a few steps forward to
the open floor; then, after hesitating a moment, he mounted the little
platform and stood in the teacher's place. Marilla Hender was as pale
as ashes.

"I have thought many times," the great guest began, "that some day I
should come back to visit this place, which is so closely interwoven
with the memories of my childhood. In my counting-room, on the fields
of war, in the halls of Congress, and most of all in my Western home,
my thoughts have flown back to the hills and brooks of Winby and to
this little old school-house. I could shut my eyes and call back the
buzz of voices, and fear my teacher's frown, and feel my boyish
ambitions waking and stirring in my breast. On that bench where I just
sat I saw some notches that I cut with my first jackknife fifty-eight
years ago this very spring. I remember the faces of the boys and girls
who went to school with me, and I see their grandchildren before me. I
know t