Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/155

 Then they answered: We had gotten past that. We had asked and asked, and nobody would give us anything. Endurance was worn out. Nyah—and so they remained with me the whole winter. One of them, Stephen by name, liked to take the rifle and go into the woods. And the other, Jakoff, was constantly ill, always coughing. The three of us watched the place, and when spring came, they said, Farewell, grandfather, and went away—to Russia.


 * —Were they convicts, escaping?

colony. A pair of splendid fellows. If I had not had pity on them—who knows what would have happened? They might have killed me. Then they would be taken to court again, put in prison, sent back to Siberia—why all that? You can learn nothing good in prison, nor in Siberia. But a man, what can he not learn!
 * —They were fugitives—they had left their

The Menagerie

(Night in a County Workhouse)

Oh come, ye lords and ladies of the realm, Come from your couches soft, your perfumed halls, Come watch with me throughout the weary hours. Here are there sounds to thrill your jaded nerves, Such as the cave-men, your forefathers, heard, Crouching in forests of primeval night; Here tier on tier in steel-barred cages pent The beasts ye breed and hunt throughout the world.