Sentence:  He stood in the middle of a narrow part of the road, stopped the horse, and struck Fyot with a heavy cudgel, <WSD>leaving</WSD> him <WSD>for dead</WSD> in the ditch. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  To abandon a person or other living creature that is injured or otherwise incapacitated, assuming that the death of the one abandoned will soon follow.