The Freedomseeker, page 10, Chapter One

   IN HIS WHITE CRADLE LAY THE CHILD.
   He slept.
   His little hands rested clenched upon the blanket and his breathing was steady.
   It was around the third hour of the afternoon, the tired hour of the day, and the windows of the room were heavily curtained.
   Outside, however, the burning sun crept along the walls of the houses, seek ing entry.
   It found a small chink, edged its way through, and a tiny sunbeam crept around the room and over the cot.
   As the sun moved the beam rose higher and higher on the blanket. It slid over the tiny fists, over the rosy neck, the half-open mouth and finally found the closed lids of the child.
   Now he awoke, dazzled by the sudden light. He took fright and began to cry — quietly and complainingly at first, then louder and louder in his helplessness.
   But nobody heeded him, however loudly he cried, because they knew that he was safe where he was for a while . . .
   And the sunbeam climbed higher and higher, played a little with the silken, golden hair, ran over the pillow and began its journey up the wall.
   The room lay in deep shadow as before.
   Still the child cried, frightened and impatient. At last — as if comforted by his own crying — he fell asleep again. Once more it was peaceful in the cool room.
   — Often he was to cry like this, this child, in the life that had hardly yet begun: lonely and unheeded.
   But always he was destined to find in himself his comfort and ultimate peace.

   THE CHILD OF INCOMPATIBLE PARENTS, of a marriage which was entered into on the one hand with the passion of old age and on the other without affection, he was born in the years after a bloody war in which two