had
often been known to boast that he paid the lord of the manor as much
money as the rent of a small farm.

One of Luke's eyes was closed with a kind of watery rheum, and was never
opened except when he thought a rabbit was about to jump into a net. The
other was but half open, and so overhung with a thick grey eyebrow as to
be barely visible. His cheeks were the hue of clay, his chin scrubby,
and a lanky black forelock depended over one temple. A battered felt
hat, a ragged discoloured slop, and corduroys stained with the clay of
the banks completed his squalid costume.

A more miserable object or one apparently more deserving of pity it
would be hard to imagine. To see him crawl with slow and feeble steps
across the fields in winter, gradually working his way in the teeth of a
driving rain, was enough to arouse compassion in the hardest heart:
there was something so utterly woebegone in his whole aspect--so
weather-beaten, as if he had been rained upon ever since childhood. He
seemed humbled to the ground--crushed and spiritless.

Now and then Luke was employed by some of the farmers to do their
ferreting for them and to catch the rabbits in the banks by the
roadside. More than once benevolent people driving by in their cosy
cushioned carriages, and seeing this lonely wretch in the bitter wind
watching a rabbit's hole as if he were a dog well beaten and thrashed,
had been known to stop and call the poor old fellow to the carriage
door. Then Luke would lay his hand on his knee, shake his head, and
sorrowfully state his pains and miseries: 'Aw, I be ter-rable bad, I
be,' he would say; 'I be most terrable bad: I can't but just drag my leg
out of this yer ditch. It be a dull job, bless 'ee, this yer.' The tone,
the look of the man, the dreary winter landscape all so thoroughly
agreed together that a few small silver coins would drop into his hand,
and Luke, with a deep groaning sigh of thankfulness, would bow and
scrape and go back to his 'dull job.'

Luke, indeed, somehow or other was always in favour with the 'quality.'
He was as firmly fixed in his business as if he had been the most clever
courtier. It was not of the least use for any one else to offer to take
the rabbits, even if they would give more money. No, Luke was the trusty
man; Luke, and nobody else, was worthy. So he grovelled on from year to
year, blinking about the place. When some tenant found a gin in the
turnip field, or a wire by the clover, and q