Lynde brought his glass to bear on the red brick edifice mentioned, and fell to pondering it again.

“I’ll be hanged if I don’t think it’s a nunnery,” he said.  By and by he let his gaze wander back to the town, in which he detected an appearance of liveliness and bustle not usual in New England villages, large or small.  The main street was dotted with groups of men and women; and isolated figures, to which perhaps the distance lent a kind of uncanny aspect, were to be seen hurrying hither and thither.

“It must be some local celebration,” thought Lynde.  “Rural oratory and all that sort of thing.  That will be capital!”

He had returned the glass to its leather case, and was settling it well on his hip, when he saw a man approaching.  It was a heavily built old gentleman in a suit of black alpaca, somewhat frayed and baggy at the knees, but still respectable.  He carried his hat in his hand, fanning himself with it from time to time, as if overcome by heat and the fatigue of walking.  A profusion of snow-white hair, parted in the middle, swept down on either side of a face remarkable—­if it was remarkable for anything—­for its benign and simple expression.  There was a far-off, indescribable something about this person, as though he had existed long ago and once had a meaning, but was now become an obsolete word in the human dictionary.  His wide placid brows and the double chin which asserted itself above his high neckcloth gave him a curious resemblance to portraits of Dr. Franklin.

“The country parson,” said Lynde to himself.  “Venerable and lovely old character.  I’ll speak to him.”

The old gentleman, with his head slightly thrown back, had his eyes fixed intently on some object in the sky, and was on the point of passing Lynde without observing him, when the young man politely lifted his hat, and said, “I beg your pardon, sir, but will you be kind enough to tell me the name of the town yonder?”

The old gentleman slowly brought his eyes down from the sky, fixed them vacantly upon Lynde, and made no response.  Presuming him to be deaf, Lynde repeated his question in a key adapted to the exigency.  Without a change in his mild, benevolent expression, and in a voice whose modulations were singularly musical, the old gentleman exclaimed, “Go to the devil!” and passed on.

The rejoinder was so unexpected, the words themselves were so brusque, while the utterance was so gentle and melodious, that Lynde refused to credit his ears.  Could he have heard aright?  Before he recovered from his surprise the gentleman in black was far up the slope, his gaze again riveted on some remote point in the zenith.

“It wasn’t the country parson after all,” said Lynde, with a laugh; “it was the village toper.  He’s an early bird—­I’ll say that for him—­to have secured his intoxicating worm at this hour of the morning.”