Ephraim Beamish was not taken. Mark succeeded in effecting his escape from the Fens. He supplied him with money, and Beamish took ship at Liverpool for the United States, where he bought a farm, then turned backwoods Baptist preacher, tired of that, returned to farm life, and married Kainie, who went out to him. She was a rich woman, and might have had her pick of the young fen-farmers. She had inherited everything that had belonged to her uncle. But Kainie would have no one save Pip, and as Pip could not come to her, she sold Prickwillow to Mark, and went out to the man of her choice in the New World. Mark gave his half-sister a fair price for the farm. The land had been seriously injured by the inundation, and would have been more seriously affected had not the bankers, summoned by Kainie, been able rapidly and effectually to stop the breach. Mark was now a man of substance. When he purchased Prickwillow, he united that estate to Crumbland, and became one of the largest landed proprietors in that portion of the Fens; nevertheless, like his fellow-yeomen, he did not affect to be a squire, but lived in sober fashion, worked with his men, and worked harder than any one of them. A popular man he was with the labourer as with the farmer, for he was just and kindly, and possessed unflagging good spirits. He amassed money. Let his sons or grandsons style themselves gentlemen, said he; for his part, he was content to be plain Mark Runham, farmer. 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.