SLAVES OF FREEDOM By Coningsby Dawson New York: Henry Holt And Company 1916 [Illustration: 0003] [Illustration: 0007] A SLAVE OF FREEDOM The Night slips his arm about the Moon And walks till the skies grow gray; But my Love, when I speak of love, Has never a word to say. I set my dreams at her feet as lamps For which all my hope must pay; But my Love, when I speak of love, Has never a word to say. I fill her hands with a gleaming soul For her plaything night and day; But she, when I speak to her of love, Has never a word to say. I give my life, which is hers to kill Or to keep with her alway; And still, when I speak to her of love, She’s never a word to say. _The Night slips his arm about the Moon And walks till the skies grow gray; But my Love, when I speak of love, Has never a word to say._ BOOK I--LIFE TILL TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER I--MRS. SHEERUG’S GARDEN Nother bucket o’ mortar, Mr. Ooze.” The excessively thin man glanced up from the puddle of lime that he was stirring and regarded the excessively fat man with a smile of meek interrogation. “‘Nother bucket o’ mortar, Willie Ooze, and don’t you put your ’ead on one side at me like a bloomin’ cockatoo.” Mr. William Hughes stuttered an apology. “I was thin-thinking.” “Thin-thinking!” The fat man laughed good-naturedly. Turning his back on his helper, he gave the brick which he had just laid an extra tap to emphasize his incredulity. “’Tisn’t like you.” The thin man’s feelings were wounded. To the little boy who looked on this was evident from the way he swallowed. His Adam’s-apple took a run up his throat and, at the last moment, thought better of it. “But I _was_ thinking,” he persisted; “thinking that I’d learnt something from stirring up this gray muck. If ever I was to kill somebody--you, for instance, or that boy--I’d know better than to bury you in slaked lime.” “Uml Urn!” The fat man gulped with surprise. He puckered his vast chin against his collar so that his voice came deep and strangled. “It’s scraps o’ knowledge like that as saves men from the gallers. If ’alf the murderers that is ’anged ’ad come to me first, they wouldn’t be ’anging. But--but----” He seemed at last to realize the unkind implication of Mr. Hughes’s naive confession. “But I’d make four o’ you, Willyum! You couldn’t kill me, however you tried.”