A battered felt hat, a ragged discoloured slop, and corduroys stained with the clay of the banks completed his squalid costume.
A more miserable object or one apparently more deserving of pity it would be hard to imagine.

To see him crawl with slow and feeble steps across the fields in winter, gradually working his way in the teeth of a driving rain, was enough to arouse compassion in the hardest heart: there was something so utterly woebegone in his whole aspect--so weather-beaten, as if he had been rained upon ever since childhood.

He seemed humbled to the ground--crushed and spiritless.
Now and then Luke was employed by some of the farmers to do their ferreting for them and to catch the rabbits in the banks by the roadside.

More than once benevolent people driving by in their cosy cushioned carriages, and seeing this lonely wretch in the bitter wind watching a rabbit's hole as if he were a dog well beaten and thrashed, had been known to stop and call the poor old fellow to the carriage door.

Then Luke would lay his hand on his knee, shake his head, and sorrowfully state his pains and miseries: 'Aw, I be ter-rable bad, I be,' he would say; 'I be most terrable bad: I can't but just drag my leg out of this yer ditch.