Cheap Jack Zita

The trial of the rioters came on before a Special Commission, that sat a few weeks after the arrest of the men. The cutting of the embankment after the arrest had greatly exaspe...

A few days were allowed to pass to obtain fresh captures. On a keen, frosty morning, those taken by the constable and the military, to the number of nearly forty persons, were b...

At the time of our tale, the Duck at Isleham—a solitary inn on slightly rising ground—was notorious as a place of resort for poachers, a centre to which smuggled goods were brou...

No country in the world is so subject to variations in the climate as England, and in no part of England are the variations so felt as in the Fens. No hills, no belts of trees t...

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 fla...

'What do you want? Who are you?' asked Ki Drownlands, when he had sufficiently recovered his self-possession to see that some one was clinging to him, and that that person was a...

Drownlands had been for some time in the upstairs room that served as his office. He had brought out his account-books, lighted his lamp, and was endeavouring to engage his thou...

'It is a shame! It is disgraceful! They have taken my ten pounds, and yet they are carrying off my van. They have put Jewel into the shafts. They might as well have harnessed th...

The words were hardly out of Zita's mouth before they were repented. The anger, the desire for revenge, which had spurted up in her heart, was abated as rapidly as it had risen.

A sleepless night followed the day of the funeral. Zita needed rest, but obtained none. She had brain occupied by care as well as heart reduced by sorrow. She had loved her fath...

When Zita returned to Prickwillow, Leehanna Tunkiss, with a malicious leer, said, 'The master is upstairs, and would like to speak with you;' then, with a sidelong look at the m...

There is not in all England—there is hardly in the world—any tract of country more depressing to the spirits, more void of elements of loveliness, than the Cambridgeshire Fens a...

No sight in the Fens is so solemn, so touching, as a funeral. There are no graveyards in the Fens. There is no earth to which the dead can be committed—only peat, and this in dr...

A crowd was collected about the van; a crowd composed of all sorts and conditions of men, jostling each other, trampling on the grass of the lawn, climbing up the carved work of...

'Tell them to wait, and I will be down directly,' she said. 'I made them a promise, and I must keep it. I am glad they are here; they can witness the will, now that Mark Runham...

The shrill voice of Mrs. Tunkiss was heard, as she ran screaming up the stairs, calling for 'the master.' Then she burst into his room, followed by the maid-of-all-work, who was...

A sough of wind passed over the Fens like a long-drawn sigh. Every one who heard it listened in silence. It was repeated, and then the general comment was, 'The skating is over.'

After a night of revelry, the winter morning broke on men lying tipsy or asleep about the smouldering embers of their fire, against the walls of houses, or crowded on the benche...

'What did you mean by that which you said to the magistrates—that you were tied here by frost, held by mud, and that when frost went and mud dried you would be free to go?'

The Isle of Ely, with the city in its midst, and the cathedral in the midst of the city, is more ecclesiastical than Rome itself. Until comparatively recent times the Bishop was...

She anticipated a scene with him and prepared for it. He was wont to domineer in his house and on the farm, and she had just seen how he domineered and enforced his will on an a...

Zita walked back in the direction of Prickwillow with a weight on her heart and her mind ill at ease. Incidents half observed rose in her memory and demanded consideration—as in...

'Now, here's a chance you may never have again—a chance, let me tell you, you never _will_ have again.' She extended in both hands packages of tea done up in silvered paper. 'Th...

A Strangely interesting city is Ely. Unique in its way is the metropolis of the Fens; wonderful exceeding it must have been in the olden times when the fen-land was one great in...

The November frost had continued, and canals and rivers were iced over as well as dykes and drains. God's plough was in the soil—that is what country folk say when the frost cut...

The tidings that the dragoons were on their way to Littleport had hardly spread sufficiently in the forenoon to draw together great quantities of spectators, but after they had...

Zita hurried along the tow-path. Her mind was in a tumult. The full force of the words of Ephraim she could not understand. He and his comrades were letting the waters of the ri...

Then again the young man sped forward with the sledge, at full speed on his skates. There was a glow of something more than health—something more than the reaction produced by t...

'Take it, and keep it,' said Drownlands, handing the will to Zita. 'You can read. It is as you desired, and on the same condition as before. That is as you promised.'

'Why, my dear Zita, I thought I could get them off without it. I gave them Drownlands' twenty. He escaped cheap at that price, and twenty pounds is nothing to him. I made sure I...

Those who lived by fishing and fowling were angry because the improved drainage had destroyed their sporting grounds. Those who had been left behind in the scramble for land wer...

Now only did she see why Mark had refused to look at her; now only understand what he meant when he said that she had sold herself body and soul; now only comprehended what the...

Her cheek burned as though it had been struck, and her pulses throbbed. She would like to have beaten Mrs. Tunkiss with one of the flails; but with creatures of that sort it is...

He had left Zita to go after that fellow, Pip Beamish, and they were together on the embankment in close confabulation. The girl looked after them from between the red curtains,...

Zita had run on. Her young heart was full of the agony of distress for her father. He was the one object in the world to whom her heart clung. She had lost her mother early, and...

Jake Runham, the father of Mark, had made the acquaintance of Drownlands' sister, and had betrayed her. Instead of marrying her, he suddenly took a woman who was an heiress, mar...

He had not let drop these ominous words at random. He hated Mark with deadly animosity, and Zita knew very well the reason. He loved her, and considered that Mark stood in his w...

The young man noticed that Zita was in the room, but he did not look at her or address her. He directed his eyes steadily at Drownlands, who remained seated at the table.

'Would you like to climb?' asked Kainie. 'Look! I go up like a squirrel. You had best not attempt it. If your skirts were to catch in the cogs, there'd be minced Cheap Jack for...

Days passed; Zita had settled into Prickwillow. She was given her own room, and into that she removed the contents of the van. The walls were lined with the stock in trade, and...

She walked on, then halted, changed her hand on the bridle, and, gazing about, said, 'You could free yourself of him in no other fashion, so you swear his life away. But you hav...

rest, that it had a tuft of willows growing beside it, and that, on an elevated brick platform, whereon it was planted, stood as well a small house, constructed, like the mill,...