Then, suddenly, Mr. Carpenter jumped to his feet, gasping with relief. He knew what he would do! He would say nothing at all himself; he would call upon the stranger. It was perfectly true that precedent put a visitor's speech at the end of an entertainment, rather than at the beginning, but the teacher cared not a rap for precedent. The stranger should speak now, and thus set an example to the children. Hearing his easy _th's_ and _v's_, they would have less trouble with their English. Color returned to the teacher's cheeks; only Katy Gaumer realized how terrified he had been. So elated was he that he introduced the speaker without stumbling. "It is somebody here that we do not have often with us at such a time," announced Mr. Carpenter. "It is a governor here; he will make us a speech." The governor rose, smiling, and Millerstown, smiling, also, craned its neck to see. Then Millerstown prepared itself to hear. What it heard, it could scarcely believe. The governor had spoken for at least two minutes before his hearers realized anything but a sharp shock of surprise. The children looked and listened, and gradually their mouths opened; the fathers and mothers heard, and at once elbows sought neighboring sides in astonished nudges. Bevy Schnepp actually exclaimed aloud; Mr. Carpenter flushed a brilliant, apoplectic red. Only Katy Gaumer sat un-moved, being too much astonished to stir. She had looked at the stranger with awe; she regarded him now with incredulous amazement. The governor had been away from Millerstown for thirty years; he was a graduate of a university; he had honorary degrees; the teacher had warned the children to look as though they understood him whether they understood him or not. "If he asks you any English questions and you do not know what he means, I will prompt you a little," the teacher had promised. "You need only to look once a little at me." But the distinguished stranger asked no difficult English questions; the distinguished stranger did not even speak English; he spoke his own native, unenlightened Pennsylvania German! It came out so naturally, he seemed so like any other Millerstonian standing there, that they could hardly believe that he was distinguished and still less that he was a stranger. He said that he had not been in that schoolroom for thirty years, and that if any one had asked him its dimensions, he would have answered that it would be hard to throw a ball from one corner to the other. And now from where he stood he could almost touch its sides! He remembered Caleb Stemmel and called him by name, and asked whether he had any little boys and girls there to speak pieces, at which everybody laughed. Caleb Stemmel was too selfish ever to have cared for anybody but himself.