So Mr. Isaacs placed himself in a cross-fire, at five paces’ distance from the muzzle of each pistol; and it is not surprising that one bullet should have gone through the tail of his coat, and the other grazed his elbow, so as to incapacitate him for ever for that hard work to which he had always shown such a profound disinclination. After this truly Hibernian satisfaction had been given and received, the party all sat down again, and drank claret till church-time. But these days could not last for ever. One rainy morning, Ike’s good-humoured patron sent for his old nurse, his huntsman, his trainer, and the parish priest, bid the three first an affectionate farewell, and took his own departure very peaceably under the offices of the last. He left a handsome amount of debt, accumulated during many years, but no ready money, except a crooked sixpence on his watch-chain. Mr. Isaacs, returning to England without a shilling, became plain “Ike” once more. He tried life in towns, under many different characters. As a billiard-marker, a light porter, an assistant-ostler, and a penny-postman; but the temptation to the copses and hedgerows was too strong for him, and the receipt of regular wages so unnatural as to be almost unpleasant. Even the tinker’s nomadic profession, which he adopted for a time, was of too settled and business-like a nature; and he gave it up ere long, in a fit of impatience and disgust. This wandering trade, however, brought him one winter into the neighbourhood of Soakington; and a day with the Castle-Cropper hounds, beginning on the old pony that drew his cart, and ended on his own active and enduring feet, revived all his smouldering passion for the chase. From that time, he took up his residence in one of the tumble-down cottages near The Haycock, of which he rented a little apartment like a dog-kennel. Hence he hunted as regularly as any other sportsman with half-a-dozen horses and a covert-hack. No distance was too great for him in the morning; indeed he generally travelled to the meet with the hounds, stayed out all day, and came home in the same good company. Whatever might be the pace he contrived to live with them, even before he became thoroughly familiar with the country, and would face the large Soakington fences—ay, and clear them, too—in his stride, as gallantly as a thorough-bred horse sixteen hands high, and up to fourteen stone.