Old Harry Verney, the other keeper, was a character in his way, and a very bad character too, though he was a patriarch among all the gamekeepers of the vale. He was a short, wiry, bandy-legged, ferret-visaged old man, with grizzled hair, and a wizened face tanned brown and purple by constant exposure. Between rheumatism and constant handling the rod and gun, his fingers were crooked like a hawk's claws. He kept his left eye always shut, apparently to save trouble in shooting; and squinted, and sniffed, and peered, with a stooping back and protruded chin, as if he were perpetually on the watch for fish, flesh, and fowl, vermin and Christian. The friendship between himself and the Scotch terrier at his heels would have been easily explained by Lessing, for in the transmigration of souls the spirit of Harry Verney had evidently once animated a dog of that breed. He was dressed in a huge thick fustian jacket, scratched, stained, and patched, with bulging, greasy pockets; a cast of flies round a battered hat, riddled with shot-holes, a dog- whistle at his button-hole, and an old gun cut short over his arm, bespoke his business. 'I seed that 'ere Crawy against Ashy Down Plantations last night, I'll be sworn,' said he, in a squeaking, sneaking tone. 'Well, what harm was the man doing?' 'Oh, ay, that's the way you young 'uns talk. If he warn't doing mischief, he'd a been glad to have been doing it, I'll warrant. If I'd been as young as you, I'd have picked a quarrel with him soon enough, and found a cause for tackling him. It's worth a brace of sovereigns with the squire to haul him up. Eh? eh? Ain't old Harry right now?' 'Humph!' growled the younger man. 'There, then, you get me a snare and a hare by to-morrow night,' went on old Harry, 'and see if I don't nab him. It won't lay long under the plantation afore he picks it up. You mind to snare me a hare to-night, now!' 'I'll do no such thing, nor help to bring fake accusations against any man!' 'False accusations!' answered Harry, in his cringing way. 'Look at that now, for a keeper to say! Why, if he don't happen to have a snare just there, he has somewhere else, you know. Eh? Ain't old Harry right now, eh?' 'Maybe.' 'There, don't say I don't know nothing then. Eh? What matter who put the snare down, or the hare in, perwided he takes it up, man? If 'twas his'n he'd be all the better pleased. The most notoriousest poacher as walks unhung!' And old Harry lifted up his crooked hands in pious indignation. 'I'll have no more gamekeeping, Harry. What with hunting down Christians as if they were vermin, all night, and being cursed by the squire all day, I'd sooner be a sheriff's runner, or a negro slave.'