He is a tough, spare old man, very lean and very wrinkled, who looks as if all the juices had been exuded from his body by severe and unremitting exercise, till nothing has been left but sinew, gristle, and a pair of keen, dark eyes, like those of a hawk. It is as if the original Isaac had been boiled down to what chemists call a _residuum_, and “Ike” was the result. He must have been a tall fellow in his youth, although he is now so bent, and twisted, and knotted, that he carries his head at a much lower elevation than was intended by Nature, and his light, wiry form still denotes the possession of considerable strength. To look at him, you could swear he was the sort of fellow who was the best runner, leaper, cricketer, and fisherman of his parish; who could throw a stone further, and consequently hit harder, than any of his brother-yokels, and who was sure to be at the core of all the merry-making, and half the mischief that angered the squire and made the parson grieve. There is always one such scapegrace in every hamlet. As a boy at the village school, he climbs the tallest elms, takes the earliest birds’ nests, and is constantly prowling about the belfry, to curry favour with the ringers, and interfere, with unspeakable interest, when anything is done to the church clock. As a lad, he turns out a swift bowler, a dead hand at skittles, and a very useful fellow at all odd jobs; yet somehow, continually out of work. By degrees, he becomes an irregular attendant at church, and is always hankering about the stream, partly to make love to the miller’s daughter, and partly (as the squire’s keeper—a wary old bird, who began in exactly the same way himself—has found out) to set night-lines, trimmers, and such abominations, thereby entering unfailingly on the downward career of the poacher, to which “the contemplative man’s recreation” is apt to be the first step. After that, he gets thoroughly inoculated with the fatal passion. Then come the “shiny nights,” the slaughtered pheasants, and the netted hares; the sleep by day; the pot-house rendezvous; the covered cart driven to a poulterer’s, who ought to know better, in the neighbouring market-town; the general laxity of principle, and utter demoralisation consequent on a life of habitual crime—perhaps the irresistible temptation of too heavy a sweep, the conflict with the keepers, fought out fiercely and unsparingly on both sides, to result in a verdict of manslaughter, and transportation for life.