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Zeen was dead now and she remained ... and all those children, her children, who still had so long to live, would also grow old, in their turn, and die ... ever on ... and all that misery and slaving and then to go ... and Zeen, her Zeen, the Zeen of yesterday, who was still alive then and not ill. Her Zeen; and she saw him as a young man over forty years ago: a handsome chap he was.
He hoped no harm hadn't come to the gentleman in the parlour; he had a powerful zight o' money on un for a man to carry about; the landlord had zeen it when he took out his book from his pocket to pay the porter. Volks didn't ought to go about with two or dree hundred pound or more in the lonely lanes on the edge of the moorland.
I am praisant wen the plaice is un-cloase. I stant near, wen soomsing make a beeg chock' he meant shock or jar 'ant richt town falls out the klass. Wen I haf zeen it, I go queek ant look at doze shems. Ach! I know it awal 'tis fawlze awal effery stonzes! That was the story. They had found the glass cut, and false gems in place of the true.
She was so tired, so worn out with that reaping; and it was so warm here, so stifling and it smelt queer: what a being could come to, when he was dead! Had she slept at all? She had been lying there so long ... and there was that smell! She wished she had sent Warten away and gone herself to lie in the goat-house; here, beside that corpse ... but, after all, it was Zeen....
Then she went and lit the fire in the hearth, hung up the pot with the goat's food, washed the potatoes and sat down to peel them for supper. She had not peeled three, when she heard Zeen bringing up. "That's the oil, it'll do him good," she thought and, fetching a can of water from outside, gave him a bowl to drink. Then she went back to her peeling.
"Zee vidow is our only chanze. Hold up, mein vrow," said Scholtz, taking a firmer grasp of his wife, who, having leisure to think and look about her now, felt her heart begin to fail. "I know zee road vell," continued Scholtz. "It is bad, but I have zeen vurse. Ve must carry zee vimen. Zey could not valk."
Treze was tired of holding Zeen's hand round the candle: she spilt a few drops of wax on the rail of the bed and stuck the candle on it. Zeen jerked himself up, put his hands under the clothes and fumbled with them; then he lay still. "He's packing up," whispered Barbara. "He's going," one of the others thought.
Mite knew of other remedies, Stanse knew of some too and Treze of many more: they asked Zeen questions and babbled to him, made him put out his tongue and felt his pulse, cried out at his gasping for breath and his pale colour and his dilated pupils and his burning fever. Zeen did not stir and lay looking at the ceiling. When he was tired of the noise, he said: "Leave me alone."
"No, never 'ad none, and yet 'ud play the drum wi' 'is toes and fire off a horse pistol. Lor, you would 'er laughed to 'av zeen 'im. 'E made fine sport for the folks 'e did." Jackie Deeds had recovered his good-humour. He peered up into the boy's face again maliciously, and broke into cheerless, creaking merriment. "Gor a'mighty 'as 'is jokes too," he said.
Zeen lay there, on a poverty-stricken little bed, low down near the ground, behind the loom, huddled deep on his bolster under a dirty blanket: a thin little black chap, leaning against a pillow in the dancing twilight of the lantern. His eyes were closed and his bony face half-hidden in the blue night-cap.
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