What is to be told concerning Zita?
The ill opinion formed of her had been due mainly to the malicious and slanderous tongue of Leehanna Tunkiss. Whatever had been said against Zita was traceable to this source.
When it was discovered that Ki Drownlands had made and executed his will on the very day on which he died, and that in it he had constituted his niece sole heiress of all he possessed, and had not even mentioned the Cheap Jack girl, the trust of the fen-folk in the word of Mrs. Tunkiss failed. The housekeeper was discredited and her stories disbelieved.
It was not long before Mark Runham made Zita his wife, and the van, with all its goods, was moved by a team of his horses to Crumbland.
There was one secret Zita retained locked in her heart, and which she never revealed to Mark—the events of the night when Ki Drownlands and Jake Runham met on the embankment and fought with the flails till Mark's father was cast into the canal—there to perish. There was no necessity for her to tell it. The guilty man had died as had his foe—in the same water.
For many years recourse was had to the stores of the van whenever the household was in need of some article there in stock.
In the Fens, when a man requires to traverse a considerable distance, he provides himself with a leaping-pole, and makes for his destination in a bee-line, clearing every watery obstruction in his way.
The author now uses this privilege—takes pole in hand, and, seeing the end before him, makes for it. What does he first see after having put down the pole and leaped?
A van. Surely the familiar Cheap Jack conveyance, crawling along the drove on a summer's day, drawn by an old horse that takes a few steps, then pauses, breathes hard, looks behind him with a peculiarly resolute expression in his eye, and ignores absolutely every appeal, entreaty, objurgation addressed to him, till he has recovered his wind, when he goes on once more.