In the street of the village, you might see cattle-dealers with cows and oxen for sale, and pig-drovers, with herds of squeaking swine, and farmers, with cart-loads of cabbages, turnips, onions, and all other produce of the soil.  Now and then a farmer’s red-faced wife trotted along on horseback, with butter and cheese in two large panniers.  The people of the village, with country squires and other visitors from the neighborhood, walked hither and thither, trading, jesting, quarrelling, and making just such a bustle as their fathers and grandfathers had made half a century before.

In one part of the street, there was a puppet-show, with a ridiculous Merry-Andrew, who kept both grown people and children in a roar of laughter.  On the opposite side was the old stone church of Uttoxeter, with ivy climbing up its walls, and partly obscuring its Gothic windows.

There was a clock in the gray tower of the ancient church; and the hands 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.

“Make way, sir!” he would cry out, in a loud, harsh voice, when somebody happened to interrupt his progress.—­“Sir, you intrude your person into the public thoroughfare!”

“What a queer old fellow this is!” muttered the people among themselves, hardly knowing whether to laugh or to be angry.

But, when they looked into the venerable stranger’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.

On the very spot of ground, where the stranger now stood, some aged people remembered that old Michael Johnson had formerly kept his bookstall.  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.