ped two or three of the young voices; but
most of the children only stared, and neither spoke nor moved.

"We will omit the class in Fourth Reader this afternoon. The class in
grammar may recite," said Miss Hender in her most contained and
official manner.

The grammar class sighed like a single pupil, and obeyed. She was very
stern with the grammar class, but every one in school had an inner
sense that it was a great day in the history of District Number Four.

II.

The Honorable Mr. Laneway found the outdoor air very fresh and sweet
after the closeness of the school-house. It had just that same odor in
his boyhood, and as he escaped he had a delightful sense of playing
truant or of having an unexpected holiday. It was easier to think of
himself as a boy, and to slip back into boyish thoughts, than to bear
the familiar burden of his manhood. He climbed the tumble-down stone
wall across the road, and went along a narrow path to the spring that
bubbled up clear and cold under a great red oak. How many times he had
longed for a drink of that water, and now here it was, and the thirst
of that warm spring day was hard to quench! Again and again he stopped
to fill the birchbark dipper which the school-children had made, just
as his own comrades made theirs years before. The oak-tree was dying
at the top. The pine woods beyond had been cut and had grown again
since his boyhood, and looked much as he remembered them. Beyond the
spring and away from the woods the path led across overgrown pastures
to another road, perhaps three quarters of a mile away, and near this
road was the small farm which had been his former home. As he walked
slowly along, he was met again and again by some reminder of his
youthful days. He had always liked to refer to his early life in New
England in his political addresses, and had spoken more than once of
going to find the cows at nightfall in the autumn evenings, and being
glad to warm his bare feet in the places where the sleepy beasts had
lain, before he followed their slow steps homeward through bush and
brier. The Honorable Mr. Laneway had a touch of true sentiment which
added much to his really stirring and effective campaign speeches. He
had often been called the "king of the platform" in his adopted State.
He had long ago grown used to saying "Go" to one man, and "Come" to
another, like the ruler of old; but all his natural power of
leadership and habit of authority disappeared at once