'I'm past that, Zit. I'm dying. It's o' no use urging of me. I sticks here as does Jewel. I can't move. I'm too bad for that. O Lord! that I should die in this here fen-land!'
'Let me get you some brandy.'
'It ain't of no use at all, Zit. I'm just about done for. 'Tis so with goods at times; when they gets battered and bulged and broken and all to pieces, they must be chucked aside. I'm no good no more as a Cheap Jack. I'm battered and bulged and broken and all to pieces, so I'm going to be chucked aside.'
Zita considered for a moment. Then she set down the lantern at her father's side, ran up the embankment, ran along it in the direction which had been taken by the riders, one after the other, crying as loud as she possibly could, 'Help! help! Father is dying. Help! help! help!'
CHAPTER V
THE FLAILS AGAIN
HEZEKIAH, or, as he was usually called for short, Ki, Drownlands was riding homewards from the Ely Fair along the embankment of the river Lark. He bore over his shoulder the flail that had cost him twelve shillings and sixpence, and in his heart glowed a consuming rage that his adversary and neighbour—perhaps adversary because neighbour—Jeremiah or Jake Runham had paid a guinea for the companion flail, and had outbidden him.
It was not that Ki Drownlands particularly required a flail, or a companion flail to that he had secured, but he was intolerant of opposition, and it was his ambition to be first in his fen; he would show his supremacy by outbidding the only man approaching him in wealth and in influence, and that before a crowd made up in part of people who knew him and his rival. It was gall to his liver to think that he had been surpassed in his offer, that an advantage over him had been snatched, and that Jake Runham had been able to carry off from under his nose something—it mattered not what—that he, Ki Drownlands, had coveted, and had let people see that he had coveted.