A NEW DANGER

'MARK, how was it that you did not give them my ten pounds?'

'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 could induce them to leave your van alone without payment to do so, and when I saw them harness Jewel to it, then I was quite certain they would have to leave it; you do not suppose I would have suffered those rascals to take your money except in an extremity? To rob you was to rob me, Zit—for I never would have suffered you to lose those ten pounds. If I had been constrained to give them up, I would have refunded this sum to you out of my own pocket.'

'You are very good.'

'Not at all. I have more money than I know how to spend.'

'You are good all round. You pulled Pip Beamish out of the water, and I know you do not love him.'

'You see I help one I love, and one I do not love.'

Zita coloured. 'I did not mean that.'

'Then I do,'said Mark roguishly. 'You are in the right in this, that I do not love Beamish,—for one thing, because I think him a perverse, meddlesome, mischievous, discontented donkey, and for another, because of Kainie.'

'Kainie again?' exclaimed Zita, drawing back.

'Yes, because I do not choose to have him running after her.'

'Why should he not run after her as well as you?'

'Because he can never make her happy.'

'And you can?'

'I can try,' said Mark.

'Well, that is frank!' said Zita, huffed. 'You called me "Dear Zita," just now—I suppose it is "Dear Kainie" as well.'

'My dear Zita'—

'Perhaps you will keep your "dears" for her, or any one else who cares to have them and share them with others. I do not wish to be so termed. I refuse to be so called.'

She turned to leave. He caught her by the arm.

'Do not be cross. I cannot explain matters now. It is all right. I did not mean to offend you.'

But Zita would not speak. She hastened to the house with pouting lips, burning cheeks, and sunken eyes. As she entered, she encountered Drownlands, in his slouched hat, and wearing a long great-coat in place of his usual tiger-skin. He held a whip in his hand, and had a pistol sticking out of his breast pocket.

'Are you going out?' asked the girl.

'Yes. You are in no further danger. The rabble will not return. I shall follow them.'

'Why so?'

'To bring all I can to the gallows. I shall watch every man I know, and see what his proceedings are. I shall take account of every act of lawlessness. They have not had my twenty pounds for nothing. I shall get some satisfaction in return. In Ely folks will be too much alarmed, the faces will be too strange for there to be recognition of offenders. That is my work. I shall witness against them, man by man, beginning with my own labourers who have revolted against me. I have purchased the right with my twenty pounds—a life for every pound—ha! ha!'

Then, looking steadily into Zita's eyes, he said in a low, bitter tone, 'I shall begin with Mark Runham.'

'Mark?' echoed the girl. 'He has done no harm.'

'Has he not? He entered my house uninvited. He acted for the rioters. He was their mouthpiece. He extorted money from me for them.'

He struck his boot with his whip, strode faster, then turned on the doorstep and said, 'If not the gallows for Mark, then transportation. I am well rid of him. See what it is for a man to venture himself in my way.'

Zita was startled. What had Mark done to incur the penalties of the law? Was it conceivable that Drownlands was in earnest? He made idle menaces. He had threatened to string the rioters to every bough of his five ash trees. He had not done it, and he could not do it. His present menace was as empty.

She watched the master ride forth from the stable when he had saddled his horse himself. No man was left on the premises to attend on him. The boy, Tom Easy, was too frightened to be of service, and Drownlands was impatient to be off.

As the farmer rode past the door, he turned his face towards Zita, but in the darkness she could not see its expression.

He pointed in the direction of Ely with his whip, and at that moment Zita heard a roar of voices, followed by an explosion of firearms borne upon the wind. In fact, the rioters had reached the metropolis of the Fens. They had let the waggon precede the marching body. The front board had been notched to receive the fowling-pieces, and the insurgent labourers, on reaching the main street, had announced their entry by a discharge of firearms and a ringing shout, calculated to strike terror into the hearts of the citizens.

Zita did not remain long inactive, listening to the sounds of uproar in the distance.

'Sharp! a pail!' she called to the quaking kitchen-maid. 'There is no reason why you should be idle, or I either, because a parcel of men are making fools of themselves.'

'A pail? What can you want a pail for at such a time as this?' asked Mrs. Tunkiss. 'You ought to be down on your knees praying.'

'You would want a pail, and soap, and water, and a scrubbing-brush, Leehanna, if you had been drawn out into the yard, and had had a score of bumpkins sitting on your back and kicking your sides with their dirty boots. I am not going to let my van remain all night in its present condition, to have the clay caked over it in the morning, just because wheat is up and wages down, and folks don't like to have it so. I will clean the van before I go to bed.'

Mrs. Tunkiss and Sarah were too much overcome to render assistance. Sarah was shaking and jerking in every limb, and Leehanna had got down her Bible to read about the fire and brimstone rained on the cities of the plain, and the escape of Lot, and to conceive herself to be a female Lot. Zita furnished herself with what she required, and set vigorously to work, commenting as she went on upon the bruises and scratches in the varnish and paint, which the sides of the van had received from the boots of those who invaded it that evening.

She was engaged on the roof of the van, when, all at once, her thoughts took a different direction, and, kneeling upright, scrubbing-brush in one hand and a piece of soap in the other, she exclaimed—

'That was impudence, if you please! to tell me he did not approve of Pip going after Kainie, and that he will do his utmost to make her happy! Does he think he can have us both? That may be fen ways, it isn't caravan morals. Hark!—what is that?'

She could hear the alarm bell of Ely Minster pealing.

'There was a song of father's that I mind,' said Zita, still kneeling upright, 'and if Mark had only been brought up in a van instead of desultory-like on the Fens, he'd have learned the things he ought to do, and the things he ought to leave alone, taught him by songs and other ways.' She sang—

'Young men, be advised, if love gets in your sconce,
Don't ever go courting two maidens at once;
With one you may work along safely and sound,
'Twixt two stools you're certain to come to the ground.'

A lurid glare was in the sky over Ely, and the bell continued to peal its note of distress.

The thoughts of Zita reverted to the threat of Drownlands. He had said he would bring Mark to the gallows, or, at all events, send him into transportation.

This had seemed to her at the time an idle threat, as the empty explosion of anger, that could do no harm, whilst it relieved the master's chafed feelings. But as she turned the matter over in her head, it appeared to her no longer as trifling a concern as she had at first supposed it to be.

Mark had entered the house, and had induced the master to part with his money to save his ricks from being burnt down, and his house from being broken into. This fact was capable of two interpretations. Mark's purpose had been obvious enough to her; but it was quite possible for his action to be misrepresented as one of sympathy with the rioters, and his interposition as being due to his having been appointed by them to act in their behalf.

Zita was now able to comprehend the purport of Drownlands calling up the servants to look at Mark, and to witness the payment of the money. And at the same time she realised the force of his words when he said that he had paid the money to be rid of Mark. She could penetrate to the inner chambers of Drownlands' heart, and read there his thoughts and intentions.

If Mark were removed, it was likely that Zita would prove more pliable. She would feel her loneliness, her isolation, and be driven to accept him as her protector. Zita was very angry when these ideas rose in her mind. She thought it incumbent on her to seek Runham and warn him to be on his guard, especially to avoid having any more connection with the rioters. Drownlands had gone in the wake of the mob; so, possibly, had Mark, out of curiosity—out of a wish to intervene, as he had intervened at Prickwillow.

Zita put down the pail, and, instead of returning to the house, walked down the road that led from the farm into the main drove by the side of the Lark embankment.