text:  The stoop of his broad shoulders between which the head was deeply sunk told a tale of long sickness which had broken a frame originally bold and strong and given a peculiarly ill-favoured appearance to a form naturally well built; and when he arose from his squatting posture the bent and withered appearance of his crooked legs which no longer possessed sufficient strength to support the bulkier frame above gave painful evidence that the wretched man had suffered cruelly from those common scourges of his class at that period--rheumatism and ague