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.