on the dial-plate had now almost reached the hour of noon. At this busiest hour of the market a strange old gentleman was seen making his way among the crowd, he was very tall and bulky, and wore a brown coat and small-clothes, with black worsted stockings and buckled shoes. On his head was a three cornered hat, beneath which a bushy gray wig thrust itself out, all in disorder. The old gentleman elbowed the people aside, and forced his way through the midst of them with a singular kind of gait, rolling his body hither and thither, so that he needed twice as much room as any other person there. </p> <p> &ldquo;Make way, sir!&rdquo; he would cry out, in a loud, harsh voice, when somebody happened to interrupt his progress. &ldquo;Sir, you intrude your person into the public thoroughfare!&rdquo; </p> <p> &ldquo;What a queer old fellow this is!&rdquo; muttered the people among themselves, hardly knowing whether to laugh or to be angry. </p> <p> But when they looked into the venerable stranger&rsquo;s face, not the most thoughtless among them dared to offer him the least impertinence. Though his features were scarred and distorted with the scrofula, and though his eyes were dim and bleared, yet there was something of authority and wisdom in his look, which impressed them all with awe. So they stood aside to let him pass; and the old gentleman made his way across the market-place, and paused near the corner of the ivy-mantled church. Just as he reached it the clock struck twelve. </p> <p> On the very spot of ground where the stranger now stood some aged people remembered that old Michael Johnson had formerly kept his book-stall. The little children who had once bought picture-books of him were grandfathers now. </p> <p> &ldquo;Yes; here is the very spot!&rdquo; muttered the old gentleman to himself. </p> <p> There this unknown personage took his stand and removed the three-cornered hat from his head. It was the busiest hour of the day. What with the hum of human voices, the lowing of cattle, the squeaking of pigs, and the laughter caused by the merry-andrew, the marketplace was in very great confusion. But the stranger seemed not to notice it any more than if the silence of a desert were around him. He was rapt in his own thoughts. Sometimes he raised his furrowed brow to heaven, as if in prayer; sometimes he bent his head, as if an insupportable weight of sorrow were upon him. It increased the awfulness of his aspect that there was a motion of his head and an almost continual tremor throughout his frame, with singular twitches and contortions of his features. </p> <p> The hot sun blazed upon his unprotected head; but he seemed not to feel its fervor.