One day, as Washington was going his accustomed rounds about the plantations, he heard the report of a gun in the neighborhood of the river; and, guessing what was in the wind, he forthwith spurred his horse in that direction, and, dashing through the bushes, came upon the culprit, just as he, paddle in hand, was pushing from the shore. The fellow, seeing his danger, cocked his gun, and, with a threatening look, levelled it directly at Washington, who, without heeding this in the least, rode into the water, and, seizing the canoe by the painter, dragged it ashore. Leaping then from his horse, he wrenched the fowling-piece from the astonished poacher, and fell to belaboring him in so clean and handsome a manner, as to make the unlucky wight heartily wish he had the wide Potomac between him and the terrible man whose iron grasp was then on his collar. My word for it, he never trespassed again on those forbidden grounds; and I dare be sworn, he never saw or ate or smelt a canvas-back thereafter, without feeling a lively smarting up and down under his jacket, and, it may be, his buckskin breeches too. It was not that a few dozen or even a hundred ducks had been shot on his premises, that Washington was thus moved to chastise this fellow; but that, in spite of wholesome warnings, he should go on breaking the laws of the land with such impunity; and also, that, instead of seeking to earn an honest livelihood by the labor of his hands, he should prefer rather to live in idleness, and gain a bare subsistence by such paltry and unlawful means. Although verging on to middle age, Washington was still very fond of active and manly sports, such as tossing the bar and throwing the sledge, wrestling, running, and jumping; in all of which he had but few equals, and no superiors. Among other stories of his strength and agility, there is one which you may come across some day in the course of your reading, relating how that, at a leaping-match, he cleared twenty-two feet seven inches of dead level turf at a single bound.