Will Sykes was designed by nature for a huntsman. With a short stature and wiry frame, he possessed activity, indomitable courage, patience, and judgment. His voice, too, seemed to come from his heart, as he cheered with lusty lungs; and his strong grey eyes encompassed a whole parish, when he threw them forward for a view. Good humour sat upon his lip, and there was a great secret in his possession, of being capable of pleasing everybody without any apparent effort. Proud--perhaps a little vain--was our Will of his exterior; but then there might be sufficient cause; for although his short-cropped hair was grizzled and frosted by time, and a few wrinkles--albeit the joint effects of laughter and age--were stamped on his ruddy cheeks, few could boast of a larger circle of admirers. Will could never pass through a village, in pink and boots, but old women and young--but more especially the young--and mothers and maids flocked to their cottage doors and windows to exchange nods and friendly greetings with him. Ladies, too, of the first degree acknowledged his polite lift of the cap with friendly smiles, and, at convenient seasons, inquired after the health of Mrs. Sykes, and took quite an interest in sundry other of his domesticities and household economy. And was the huntsman’s better half--the plump, the prim, the comely Mrs. Sykes--jealous of these attentions? By no means. That excellent and discriminating person considered that the favour in which Will was held by the gentle and simple might be ascribed to her tactics and general measures of expediency; and popularity, she had cogent reasons for supposing, had greatly to do with the liberal capping so invariably bestowed upon the huntsman, whenever his right and title to the gratuity accrued. Worthy indeed is the care to be recorded with which the worthy dame bleached and starched the cravat, folded and tied without a crease, around Will’s neck. The white cords, too, stained as they have been in many a run, with the mud flying in showers over them, are spotless, and without a speck to note the wear and tear of bygone seasons. His tops also bore evidence of a division of Mrs. Sykes’s accomplishments. Scratched and rubbed, it is true, they were; but no erasible mark was permitted to remain. His spurs, too, glittered again; and in short, “no baron or squire, or knight of the shire,” had greater attention paid to his toilet than had our huntsman.