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.

"Yes; here is the very spot!" muttered the old gentleman to himself.

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.

The hot sun blazed upon his unprotected head; but he seemed not to feel
its fervor. A dark cloud swept across the sky and rain-drops pattered
into the market-place; but the stranger heeded not the shower. The
people began to gaze at the mysterious old gentleman with superstitious
fear and wonder. Who could he be? Whence did he come? Wherefore was
he standing bareheaded in the market-place? Even the school-boys left
the merry-andrew and came to gaze, with wide-open eyes, at this tall,
strange-looking old man.

There was a cattle-drover in the village who had recently made a journey
to the Smithfield market, in London. No sooner had this man thrust his
way through the throng and taken a look at the unknown personage, than