On top of this were the rooms where they dried the "tankage," the mass
of brown stringy stuff that was left after the waste portions of the
carcasses had had the lard and tallow dried out of them. This dried
material they would then grind to a fine powder, and after they had
mixed it up well with a mysterious but inoffensive brown rock which they
brought in and ground up by the hundreds of carloads for that purpose,
the substance was ready to be put into bags and sent out to the world
as any one of a hundred different brands of standard bone phosphate. And
then the farmer in Maine or California or Texas would buy this, at say
twenty-five dollars a ton, and plant it with his corn; and for several
days after the operation the fields would have a strong odor, and the
farmer and his wagon and the very horses that had hauled it would all
have it too. In Packingtown the fertilizer is pure, instead of being a
flavoring, and instead of a ton or so spread out on several acres under
the open sky, there are hundreds and thousands of tons of it in one
building, heaped here and there in haystack piles, covering the floor
several inches deep, and filling the air with a choking dust that
becomes a blinding sandstorm when the wind stirs.

It was to this building that Jurgis came daily, as if dragged by an
unseen hand. The month of May was an exceptionally cool one, and
his secret prayers were granted; but early in June there came a
record-breaking hot spell, and after that there were men wanted in the
fertilizer mill.

The boss of the grinding room had come to know Jurgis by this time, and
had marked him for a likely man; and so when he came to the door about
two o'clock this breathless hot day, he felt a sudden spasm of pain
shoot through him--the boss beckoned to him! In ten minutes more Jurgis
had pulled off his coat and overshirt, and set his teeth together and
gone to work. Here was one more difficulty for him to meet and conquer!

His labor took him about one minute to learn. Before him was one of
the vents of the mill in which the fertilizer was being ground--rushing
forth in a great brown river, with a spray of the finest dust flung
forth in clouds. Jurgis was given a shovel, and along with half a dozen
others it was his task to shovel this fertilizer into carts. That others
were at work he knew by the sound, and by the fact that he sometimes
collided with them; otherwise they might as well not have been there,
for in the blinding dust storm a man could not see six feet in front of
his face. When he had filled one cart he had to grope around him until
another came, and if there was none on hand he continued to grope till
one arrived. In five minutes he was, of course, a mass of fertilizer
from head to feet; they gave him a sponge to tie over his mouth, so that
he could breathe, but the sponge did not prevent his lips and eyelids
from caking up with it and his ears from filling solid. He looked like
a brown ghost at twilight--from hair to shoes he became the color of the
building and of everything in it, and for that matter a hundred yards
outside it. The building had to be left open, and when the wind blew
Durham and Company lost a great deal of fertilizer.

Working in his shirt sleeves, and with the thermometer at over a
hundred, the phosphates soaked in through every pore of Jurgis' skin,
and in five minutes he had a headache, and in fifteen was almost dazed.
The blood was pounding in his brain like an engine's throbbing; there
was a frightful pain in the top of his skull, and he could hardly
control his hands. Still, with the memory of his four months' siege
behind him, he fought on, in a frenzy of determination; and half an hour
later he began to vomit--he vomited until it seemed as if his inwards
must be torn into shreds. A man could get used to the fertilizer mill,
the boss had said, if he would make up his mind to it; but Jurgis now
began to see that it was a question of making up his stomach.

At the end of that day of horror, he could scarcely stand. He had to
catch himself now and then, and lean against a building and get his
bearings. Most of the men, when they came out, made straight for a
saloon--they seemed to place fertilizer and rattlesnake poison in one
class. But Jurgis was too ill to think of drinking--he could only make
his way to the street and stagger on to a car. He had a sense of humor,
and later on, when he became an old hand, he used to think it fun to
board a streetcar and see what happened. Now, however, he was too ill to
notice it--how the people in the car began to gasp and sputter, to
put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and transfix him with furious
glances. Jurgis only knew that a man in front of him immediately got up
and gave him a seat; and that half a minute later the two people on each
side of him got up; and that in a full minute the crowded car was nearly
empty--those passengers who could not get room on the platform having
gotten out to walk.

Of course Jurgis had made his home a miniature fertilizer mill a minute
after entering. The stuff was half an inch deep in his skin--his whole
system was full of it, and it would have taken a week not merely of
scrubbing, but of vigorous exercise, to get it out of him. As it was, he
could be compared with nothing known to men, save that newest discovery
of the savants, a substance which emits energy for an unlimited time,
without being itself in the least diminished in power. He smelled so
that he made all the food at the table taste, and set the whole family
to vomiting; for himself it was three days before he could keep anything
upon his stomach--he might wash his hands, and use a knife and fork, but
were not his mouth and throat filled with the poison?

And still Jurgis stuck it out! In spite of splitting headaches he would
stagger down to the plant and take up his stand once more, and begin to
shovel in the blinding clouds of dust. And so at the end of the week he
was a fertilizer man for life--he was able to eat again, and though
his head never stopped aching, it ceased to be so bad that he could not
work.


So there passed another summer. It was a summer of prosperity, all over
the country, and the country ate generously of packing house products,
and there was plenty of work for all the family, in spite of the
packers' efforts to keep a superfluity of labor. They were again able to
pay their debts and to begin to save a little sum; but there were one or
two sacrifices they considered too heavy to be made for long--it was
too bad that the boys should have to sell papers at their age. It was
utterly useless to caution them and plead with them; quite without
knowing it, they were taking on the tone of their new environment. They
were learning to swear in voluble English; they were learning to pick up
cigar stumps and smoke them, to pass hours of their time gambling with
pennies and dice and cigarette cards; they were learning the location
of all the houses of prostitution on the "Levee," and the names of
the "madames" who kept them, and the days when they gave their state
banquets, which the police captains and the big politicians all
attended. If a visiting "country customer" were to ask them, they could
show him which was "Hinkydink's" famous saloon, and could even point out
to him by name the different gamblers and thugs and "hold-up men" who
made the place their headquarters. And worse yet, the boys were getting
out of the habit of coming home at night. What was the use, they would
ask, of wasting time and energy and a possible carfare riding out to
the stockyards every night when the weather was pleasant and they could
crawl under a truck or into an empty doorway and sleep exactly as well?
So long as they brought home a half dollar for each day, what mattered
it when they brought it? But Jurgis declared that from this to ceasing
to come at all would not be a very long step, and so it was decided
that Vilimas and Nikalojus should return to school in the fall, and
that instead Elzbieta should go out and get some work, her place at home
being taken by her younger daughter.

Little Kotrina was like most children of the poor, prematurely made old;
she had to take care of her little brother, who was a cripple, and also
of the baby; she had to cook the meals and wash the dishes and clean
house, and have supper ready when the workers came home in the evening.
She was only thirteen, and small for her age, but she did all this
without a murmur; and her mother went out, and after trudging a couple
of days about the yards, settled down as a servant of a "sausage
machine."

Elzbieta was used to working, but she found this change a hard one, for
the reason that she had to stand motionless upon her feet from seven
o'clock in the morning till half-past twelve, and again from one till
half-past five. For the first few days it seemed to her that she
could not stand it--she suffered almost as much as Jurgis had from the
fertilizer, and would come out at sundown with her head fairly reeling.
Besides this, she was working in one of the dark holes, by electric
light, and the dampness, too, was deadly--there were always puddles of
water on the floor, and a sickening odor of moist flesh in the room. The
people who worked here followed the ancient custom of nature, whereby
the ptarmigan is the color of dead leaves in the fall and of snow in the
winter, and the chameleon, who is black when he lies upon a stump and
turns green when he moves to a leaf. The men and women who worked in
this department were precisely the color of the "fresh country sausage"
they made.

The sausage-room was an interesting place to visit, for two or three
minutes, and provided that you did not look at the people; the machines
were perhaps the most wonderful things in the entire plant. Presumably
sausages were once chopped and stuffed by hand, and if so it would
be interesting to know how many workers had been displaced by these
inventions. On one side of the room were the hoppers, into which men
shoveled loads of meat and wheelbarrows full of spices; in these great
bowls were whirling knives that made two thousand revolutions a minute,
and when the meat was ground fine and adulterated with potato flour,
and well mixed with water, it was forced to the stuffing machines on
the other side of the room. The latter were tended by women; there was
a sort of spout, like the nozzle of a hose, and one of the women would
take a long string of "casing" and put the end over the nozzle and then
work the whole thing on, as one works on the finger of a tight glove.
This string would be twenty or thirty feet long, but the woman would
have it all on in a jiffy; and when she had several on, she would press
a lever, and a stream of sausage meat would be shot out, taking
the casing with it as it came. Thus one might stand and see appear,
miraculously born from the machine, a wriggling snake of sausage of
incredible length. In front was a big pan which caught these creatures,
and two more women who seized them as fast as they appeared and twisted
them into links. This was for the uninitiated the most perplexing work
of all; for all that the woman had to give was a single turn of the
wrist; and in some way she contrived to give it so that instead of an
endless chain of sausages, one after another, there grew under her hands
a bunch of strings, all dangling from a single center. It was quite like
the feat of a prestidigitator--for the woman worked so fast that the eye
could literally not follow her, and there was only a mist of motion,
and tangle after tangle of sausages appearing. In the midst of the mist,
however, the visitor would suddenly notice the tense set face, with
the two wrinkles graven in the forehead, and the ghastly pallor of the
cheeks; and then he would suddenly recollect that it was time he was
going on. The woman did not go on; she stayed right there--hour after
hour, day after day, year after year, twisting sausage links and racing
with death. It was piecework, and she was apt to have a family to keep
alive; and stern and ruthless economic laws had arranged it that she
could only do this by working just as she did, with all her soul upon
her work, and with never an instant for a glance at the well-dressed
ladies and gentlemen who came to stare at her, as at some wild beast in
a menagerie.



Chapter 14


With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a
sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great
majority of Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they found,
whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything
else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage. With what had
been told them by Jonas, who had worked in the pickle rooms, they could
now study the whole of the spoiled-meat industry on the inside, and read
a new and grim meaning into that old Packingtown jest--that they use
everything of the pig except the squeal.

Jonas had told them how the meat that was taken out of pickle would
often be found sour, and how they would rub it up with soda to take away
the smell, and sell it to be eaten on free-lunch counters; also of all
the miracles of chemistry which they performed, giving to any sort of
meat, fresh or salted, whole or chopped, any color and any flavor and
any odor they chose. In the pickling of hams they had an ingenious
apparatus, by which they saved time and increased the capacity of the
plant--a machine consisting of a hollow needle attached to a pump; by
plunging this needle into the meat and working with his foot, a man
could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And yet, in spite of
this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so
bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them. To pump
into these the packers had a second and much stronger pickle which
destroyed the odor--a process known to the workers as "giving them
thirty per cent." Also, after the hams had been smoked, there would be
found some that had gone to the bad. Formerly these had been sold as
"Number Three Grade," but later on some ingenious person had hit upon
a new device, and now they would extract the bone, about which the bad
part generally lay, and insert in the hole a white-hot iron. After this
invention there was no longer Number One, Two, and Three Grade--there
was only Number One Grade. The packers were always originating such
schemes--they had what they called "boneless hams," which were all the
odds and ends of pork stuffed into casings; and "California hams," which
were the shoulders, with big knuckle joints, and nearly all the meat cut
out; and fancy "skinned hams," which were made of the oldest hogs, whose
skins were so heavy and coarse that no one would buy them--that is,
until they had been cooked and chopped fine and labeled "head cheese!"

It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the
department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a-minute
flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was
in a ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention
paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back
from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and
white--it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the
hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat
that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the
workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.
There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from
leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about
on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man
could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of
the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would
put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread,
and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and
no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did
the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw
one--there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with
which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men
to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a
practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the
sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of
corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that
would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the
system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs
that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the
cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in
the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water--and
cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the
hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast. Some of
it they would make into "smoked" sausage--but as the smoking took
time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry
department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatine to
make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when
they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it "special," and for this
they would charge two cents more a pound.


Such were the new surroundings in which Elzbieta was placed, and such
was the work she was compelled to do. It was stupefying, brutalizing
work; it left her no time to think, no strength for anything. She was
part of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed
for the machine was doomed to be crushed out of existence. There was
only one mercy about the cruel grind--that it gave her the gift of
insensibility. Little by little she sank into a torpor--she fell silent.
She would meet Jurgis and Ona in the evening, and the three would walk
home together, often without saying a word. Ona, too, was falling into a
habit of silence--Ona, who had once gone about singing like a bird. She
was sick and miserable, and often she would barely have strength enough
to drag herself home. And there they would eat what they had to eat, and
afterward, because there was only their misery to talk of, they would
crawl into bed and fall into a stupor and never stir until it was time
to get up again, and dress by candlelight, and go back to the machines.
They were so numbed that they did not even suffer much from hunger, now;
only the children continued to fret when the food ran short.

Yet the soul of Ona was not dead--the souls of none of them were dead,
but only sleeping; and now and then they would waken, and these were
cruel times. The gates of memory would roll open--old joys would stretch
out their arms to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them, and
they would stir beneath the burden that lay upon them, and feel its
forever immeasurable weight. They could not even cry out beneath it; but
anguish would seize them, more dreadful than the agony of death. It was
a thing scarcely to be spoken--a thing never spoken by all the world,
that will not know its own defeat.

They were beaten; they had lost the game, they were swept aside. It
was not less tragic because it was so sordid, because it had to do with
wages and grocery bills and rents. They had dreamed of freedom; of a
chance to look about them and learn something; to be decent and clean,
to see their child grow up to be strong. And now it was all gone--it
would never be! They had played the game and they had lost. Six years
more of toil they had to face before they could expect the least
respite, the cessation of the payments upon the house; and how cruelly
certain it was that they could never stand six years of such a life as
they were living! They were lost, they were going down--and there was
no deliverance for them, no hope; for all the help it gave them the vast
city in which they lived might have been an ocean waste, a wilderness, a
desert, a tomb. So often this mood would come to Ona, in the nighttime,
when something wakened her; she would lie, afraid of the beating of her
own heart, fronting the blood-red eyes of the old primeval terror of
life. Once she cried aloud, and woke Jurgis, who was tired and cross.
After that she learned to weep silently--their moods so seldom came
together now! It was as if their hopes were buried in separate graves.

Jurgis, being a man, had troubles of his own. There was another specter
following him. He had never spoken of it, nor would he allow any one
else to speak of it--he had never acknowledged its existence to himself.
Yet the battle with it took all the manhood that he had--and once or
twice, alas, a little more. Jurgis had discovered drink.

He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after
week--until now, there was not an organ of his body that did its work
without pain, until the sound of ocean breakers echoed in his head day
and night, and the buildings swayed and danced before him as he went
down the street. And from all the unending horror of this there was a
respite, a deliverance--he could drink! He could forget the pain, he
could slip off the burden; he would see clearly again, he would be
master of his brain, of his thoughts, of his will. His dead self would
stir in him, and he would find himself laughing and cracking jokes with
his companions--he would be a man again, and master of his life.

It was not an easy thing for Jurgis to take more than two or three
drinks. With the first drink he could eat a meal, and he could persuade
himself that that was economy; with the second he could eat another
meal--but there would come a time when he could eat no more, and then
to pay for a drink was an unthinkable extravagance, a defiance of the
agelong instincts of his hunger-haunted class. One day, however, he took
the plunge, and drank up all that he had in his pockets, and went home
half "piped," as the men phrase it. He was happier than he had been in a
year; and yet, because he knew that the happiness would not last, he was
savage, too with those who would wreck it, and with the world, and with
his life; and then again, beneath this, he was sick with the shame of
himself. Afterward, when he saw the despair of his family, and reckoned
up the money he had spent, the tears came into his eyes, and he began
the long battle with the specter.

It was a battle that had no end, that never could have one. But Jurgis
did not realize that very clearly; he was not given much time for
reflection. He simply knew that he was always fighting. Steeped in
misery and despair as he was, merely to walk down the street was to be
put upon the rack. There was surely a saloon on the corner--perhaps on
all four corners, and some in the middle of the block as well; and each
one stretched out a hand to him each one had a personality of its own,
allurements unlike any other. Going and coming--before sunrise and
after dark--there was warmth and a glow of light, and the steam of hot
food, and perhaps music, or a friendly face, and a word of good cheer.
Jurgis developed a fondness for having Ona on his arm whenever he went
out on the street, and he would hold her tightly, and walk fast. It was
pitiful to have Ona know of this--it drove him wild to think of it; the
thing was not fair, for Ona had never tasted drink, and so could not
understand. Sometimes, in desperate hours, he would find himself wishing
that she might learn what it was, so that he need not be ashamed in her
presence. They might drink together, and escape from the horror--escape
for a while, come what would.

So there came a time when nearly all the conscious life of Jurgis
consisted of a struggle with the craving for liquor. He would have ugly
moods, when he hated Ona and the whole family, because they stood in his
way. He was a fool to have married; he had tied himself down, had made
himself a slave. It was all because he was a married man that he was
compelled to stay in the yards; if it had not been for that he might
have gone off like Jonas, and to hell with the packers. There were few
single men in the fertilizer mill--and those few were working only for a
chance to escape. Meantime, too, they had something to think about while
they worked,--they had the memory of the last time they had been drunk,
and the hope of the time when they would be drunk again. As for Jurgis,
he was expected to bring home every penny; he could not even go with
the men at noontime--he was supposed to sit down and eat his dinner on a
pile of fertilizer dust.

This was not always his mood, of course; he still loved his family. But
just now was a time of trial. Poor little Antanas, for instance--who
had never failed to win him with a smile--little Antanas was not smiling
just now, being a mass of fiery red pimples. He had had all the diseases
that babies are heir to, in quick succession, scarlet fever, mumps, and
whooping cough in the first year, and now he was down with the measles.
There was no one to attend him but Kotrina; there was no doctor to
help him, because they were too poor, and children did not die of the
measles--at least not often. Now and then Kotrina would find time to sob
over his woes, but for the greater part of the time he had to be left
alone, barricaded upon the bed. The floor was full of drafts, and if he
caught cold he would die. At night he was tied down, lest he should kick
the covers off him, while the family lay in their stupor of exhaustion.
He would lie and scream for hours, almost in convulsions; and then, when
he was worn out, he would lie whimpering and wailing in his torment.
He was burning up with fever, and his eyes were running sores; in
the daytime he was a thing uncanny and impish to behold, a plaster of
pimples and sweat, a great purple lump of misery.

Yet all this was not really as cruel as it sounds, for, sick as he was,
little Antanas was the least unfortunate member of that family. He
was quite able to bear his sufferings--it was as if he had all these
complaints to show what a prodigy of health he was. He was the child of
his parents' youth and joy; he grew up like the conjurer's rosebush, and
all the world was his oyster. In general, he toddled around the kitchen
all day with a lean and hungry look--the portion of the family's
allowance that fell to him was not enough, and he was unrestrainable in
his demand for more. Antanas was but little over a year old, and already
no one but his father could manage him.

It seemed as if he had taken all of his mother's strength--had left
nothing for those that might come after him. Ona was with child again
now, and it was a dreadful thing to contemplate; even Jurgis, dumb and
despairing as he was, could not but understand that yet other agonies
were on the way, and shudder at the thought of them.

For Ona was visibly going to pieces. In the first place she was
developing a cough, like the one that had killed old Dede Antanas. She
had had a trace of it ever since that fatal morning when the greedy
streetcar corporation had turned her out into the rain; but now it was
beginning to grow serious, and to wake her up at night. Even worse than
that was the fearful nervousness from which she suffered; she would have
frightful headaches and fits of aimless weeping; and sometimes she would
come home at night shuddering and moaning, and would fling herself down
upon the bed and burst into tears. Several times she was quite beside
herself and hysterical; and then Jurgis would go half-mad with fright.
Elzbieta would explain to him that it could not be helped, that a woman
was subject to such things when she was pregnant; but he was hardly to
be persuaded, and would beg and plead to know what had happened. She
had never been like this before, he would argue--it was monstrous and
unthinkable. It was the life she had to live, the accursed work she had
to do, that was killing her by inches. She was not fitted for it--no
woman was fitted for it, no woman ought to be allowed to do such work;
if the world could not keep them alive any other way it ought to kill
them at once and be done with it. They ought not to marry, to have
children; no workingman ought to marry--if he, Jurgis, had known what a
woman was like, he would have had his eyes torn out first. So he would
carry on, becoming half hysterical himself, which was an unbearable
thing to see in a big man; Ona would pull herself together and fling
herself into his arms, begging him to stop, to be still, that she would
be better, it would be all right. So she would lie and sob out her
grief upon his shoulder, while he gazed at her, as helpless as a wounded
animal, the target of unseen enemies.



Chapter 15


The beginning of these perplexing things was in the summer; and each
time Ona would promise him with terror in her voice that it would not
happen again--but in vain. Each crisis would leave Jurgis more and more
frightened, more disposed to distrust Elzbieta's consolations, and to
believe that there was some terrible thing about all this that he was
not allowed to know. Once or twice in these outbreaks he caught Ona's
eye, and it seemed to him like the eye of a hunted animal; there were
broken phrases of anguish and despair now and then, amid her frantic
weeping. It was only because he was so numb and beaten himself that
Jurgis did not worry more about this. But he never thought of it, except
when he was dragged to it--he lived like a dumb beast of burden, knowing
only the moment in which he was.

The winter was coming on again, more menacing and cruel than ever. It
was October, and the holiday rush had begun. It was necessary for the
packing machines to grind till late at night to provide food that would
be eaten at Christmas breakfasts; and Marija and Elzbieta and Ona, as
part of the machine, began working fifteen or sixteen hours a day. There
was no choice about this--whatever work there was to be done they had to
do, if they wished to keep their places; besides that, it added another
pittance to their incomes. So they staggered on with the awful load.
They would start work every morning at seven, and eat their dinners
at noon, and then work until ten or eleven at night without another
mouthful of food. Jurgis wanted to wait for them, to help them home at
night, but they would not think of this; the fertilizer mill was not
running overtime, and there was no place for him to wait save in a
saloon. Each would stagger out into the darkness, and make her way to
the corner, where they met; or if the others had already gone, would get
into a car, and begin a painful struggle to keep awake. When they got
home they were always too tired either to eat or to undress; they would
crawl into bed with their shoes on, and lie like logs. If they should
fail, they would certainly be lost; if they held out, they might have
enough coal for the winter.

A day or two before Thanksgiving Day there came a snowstorm. It began
in the afternoon, and by evening two inches had fallen. Jurgis tried
to wait for the women, but went into a saloon to get warm, and took two
drinks, and came out and ran home to escape from the demon; there he
lay down to wait for them, and instantly fell asleep. When he opened
his eyes again he was in the midst of a nightmare, and found Elzbieta
shaking him and crying out. At first he could not realize what she
was saying--Ona had not come home. What time was it, he asked. It was
morning--time to be up. Ona had not been home that night! And it was
bitter cold, and a foot of snow on the ground.

Jurgis sat up with a start. Marija was crying with fright and the
children were wailing in sympathy--little Stanislovas in addition,
because the terror of the snow was upon him. Jurgis had nothing to put
on but his shoes and his coat, and in half a minute he was out of the
door. Then, however, he realized that there was no need of haste, that
he had no idea where to go. It was still dark as midnight, and the thick
snowflakes were sifting down--everything was so silent that he could
hear the rustle of them as they fell. In the few seconds that he stood
there hesitating he was covered white.

He set off at a run for the yards, stopping by the way to inquire in the
saloons that were open. Ona might have been overcome on the way; or else
she might have met with an accident in the machines. When he got to the
place where she worked he inquired of one of the watchmen--there had
not been any accident, so far as the man had heard. At the time office,
which he found already open, the clerk told him that Ona's check had
been turned in the night before, showing that she had left her work.

After that there was nothing for him to do but wait, pacing back and
forth in the snow, meantime, to keep from freezing. Already the yards
were full of activity; cattle were being unloaded from the cars in the
distance, and across the way the "beef-luggers" were toiling in the
darkness, carrying two-hundred-pound quarters of bullocks into the
refrigerator cars. Before the first streaks of daylight there came the
crowding throngs of workingmen, shivering, and swinging their dinner
pails as they hurried by. Jurgis took up his stand by the time-office
window, where alone there was light enough for him to see; the snow fell
so quick that it was only by peering closely that he could make sure
that Ona did not pass him.

Seven o'clock came, the hour when the great packing machine began to
move. Jurgis ought to have been at his place in the fertilizer mill;
but instead he was waiting, in an agony of fear, for Ona. It was fifteen
minutes after the hour when he saw a form emerge from the snow mist,
and sprang toward it with a cry. It was she, running swiftly; as she saw
him, she staggered forward, and half fell into his outstretched arms.

"What has been the matter?" he cried, anxiously. "Where have you been?"

It was several seconds before she could get breath to answer him. "I
couldn't get home," she exclaimed. "The snow--the cars had stopped."

"But where were you then?" he demanded.

"I had to go home with a friend," she panted--"with Jadvyga."

Jurgis drew a deep breath; but then he noticed that she was sobbing and
trembling--as if in one of those nervous crises that he dreaded so. "But
what's the matter?" he cried. "What has happened?"

"Oh, Jurgis, I was so frightened!" she said, clinging to him wildly. "I
have been so worried!"

They were near the time station window, and people were staring at them.
Jurgis led her away. "How do you mean?" he asked, in perplexity.

"I was afraid--I was just afraid!" sobbed Ona. "I knew you wouldn't know
where I was, and I didn't know what you might do. I tried to get home,
but I was so tired. Oh, Jurgis, Jurgis!"

He was so glad to get her back that he could not think clearly about
anything else. It did not seem strange to him that she should be so very
much upset; all her fright and incoherent protestations did not matter
since he had her back. He let her cry away her tears; and then, because
it was nearly eight o'clock, and they would lose another hour if they
delayed, he left her at the packing house door, with her ghastly white
face and her haunted eyes of terror.

There was another brief interval. Christmas was almost come; and because
the snow still held, and the searching cold, morning after morning
Jurgis hall carried his wife to her post, staggering with her through
the darkness; until at last, one night, came the end.

It lacked but three days of the holidays. About midnight Marija and
Elzbieta came home, exclaiming in alarm when they found that Ona had not
come. The two had agreed to meet her; and, after waiting, had gone to
the room where she worked; only to find that the ham-wrapping girls had
quit work an hour before, and left. There was no snow that night, nor
was it especially cold; and still Ona had not come! Something more
serious must be wrong this time.

They aroused Jurgis, and he sat up and listened crossly to the story.
She must have gone home again with Jadvyga, he said; Jadvyga lived only
two blocks from the yards, and perhaps she had been tired. Nothing could
have happened to her--and even if there had, there was nothing could
be done about it until morning. Jurgis turned over in his bed, and was
snoring again before the two had closed the door.

In the morning, however, he was up and out nearly an hour before the
usual time. Jadvyga Marcinkus lived on the other side of the yards,
beyond Halsted Street, with her mother and sisters, in a single basement
room--for Mikolas had recently lost one hand from blood poisoning, and
their marriage had been put off forever. The door of the room was in the
rear, reached by a narrow court, and Jurgis saw a light in the window
and heard something frying as he passed; he knocked, half expecting that
Ona would answer.

Instead there was one of Jadvyga's little sisters, who gazed at him
through a crack in the door. "Where's Ona?" he demanded; and the child
looked at him in perplexity. "Ona?" she said.

"Yes," said Jurgis, "isn't she here?"

"No," said the child, and Jurgis gave a start. A moment later came
Jadvyga, peering over the child's head. When she saw who it was, she
slid around out of sight, for she was not quite dressed. Jurgis must
excuse her, she began, her mother was very ill--

"Ona isn't here?" Jurgis demanded, too alarmed to wait for her to
finish.

"Why, no," said Jadvyga. "What made you think she would be here? Had she
said she was coming?"

"No," he answered. "But she hasn't come home--and I thought she would be
here the same as before."

"As before?" echoed Jadvyga, in perplexity.

"The time she spent the night here," said Jurgis.

"There must be some mistake," she answered, quickly. "Ona has never
spent the night here."

He was only half able to realize the words. "Why--why--" he exclaimed.
"Two weeks ago. Jadvyga! She told me so the night it snowed, and she
could not get home."

"There must be some mistake," declared the girl, again; "she didn't come
here."

He steadied himself by the doorsill; and Jadvyga in her anxiety--for
she was fond of Ona--opened the door wide, holding her jacket across
her throat. "Are you sure you didn't misunderstand her?" she cried. "She
must have meant somewhere else. She--"

"She said here," insisted Jurgis. "She told me all about you, and how
you were, and what you said. Are you sure? You haven't forgotten? You
weren't away?"

"No, no!" she exclaimed--and then came a peevish voice--"Jadvyga, you
are giving the baby a cold. Shut the door!" Jurgis stood for half a
minute more, stammering his perplexity through an eighth of an inch of
crack; and then, as there was really nothing more to be said, he excused
himself and went away.

He walked on half dazed, without knowing where he went. Ona had deceived
him! She had lied to him! And what could it mean--where had she been?
Where was she now? He could hardly grasp the thing--much less try to
solve it; but a hundred wild surmises came to him, a sense of impending
calamity overwhelmed him.

Because there was nothing else to do, he went back to the time office to
watch again. He waited until nearly an hour after seven, and then went
to the room where Ona worked to make inquiries of Ona's "forelady." The
"forelady," he found, had not yet come; all the lines of cars that
came from downtown were stalled--there had been an accident in the
powerhouse, and no cars had been running since last night. Meantime,
however, the ham-wrappers were working away, with some one else in
charge of them. The girl who answered Jurgis was busy, and as she
talked she looked to see if she were being watched. Then a man came
up, wheeling a truck; he knew Jurgis for Ona's husband, and was curious
about the mystery.

"Maybe the cars had something to do with it," he suggested--"maybe she
had gone down-town."

"No," said Jurgis, "she never went down-town."

"Perhaps not," said the man. Jurgis thought he saw him exchange a swift
glance with the girl as he spoke, and he demanded quickly. "What do you
know about it?"

But the man had seen that the boss was watching him; he started on
again, pushing his truck. "I don't know anything about it," he said,
over his shoulder. "How should I know where your wife goes?"

Then Jurgis went out again and paced up and down before the building.
All the morning he stayed there, with no thought of his work. About
noon he went to the police station to make inquiries, and then came
back again for another anxious vigil. Finally, toward the middle of the
afternoon, he set out for home once more.

He was walking out Ashland Avenue. The streetcars had begun running
again, and several passed him, packed to the steps with people. The
sight of them set Jurgis to thinking again of the man's sarcastic
remark; and half involuntarily he found himself watching the cars--with
the result that he gave a sudden startled exclamation, and stopped short
in his tracks.

Then he broke into a run. For a whole block he tore after the car, only
a little ways behind. That rusty black hat with the drooping red flower,
it might not be Ona's, but there was very little likelihood of it.
He would know for certain very soon, for she would get out two blocks
ahead. He slowed down, and let the car go on.

She got out: and as soon as she was out of sight on the side street
Jurgis broke into a run. Suspicion was rife in him now, and he was not
ashamed to shadow her: he saw her turn the corner near their home, and
then he ran again, and saw her as she went up the porch steps of the
house. After that he turned back, and for five minutes paced up and
down, his hands clenched tightly and his lips set, his mind in a
turmoil. Then he went home and entered.

As he opened the door, he saw Elzbieta, who had also been looking for
Ona, and had come home again. She was now on tiptoe, and had a finger on
her lips. Jurgis waited until she was close to him.

"Don't make any noise," she whispered, hurriedly.

"What's the matter'?" he asked. "Ona is asleep," she panted. "She's been
very ill. I'm afraid her mind's been wandering, Jurgis. She was lost
on the street all night, and I've only just succeeded in getting her
quiet."

"When did she come in?" he asked.

"Soon after you left this morning," said Elzbieta.

"And has she been out since?" "No, of course not. She's so weak, Jurgis,
she--"

And he set his teeth hard together. "You are lying to me," he said.

Elzbieta started, and turned pale. "Why!" she gasped. "What do you
mean?"

But Jurgis did not answer. He pushed her aside, and strode to the
bedroom door and opened it.

Ona was sitting on the bed. She turned a startled look upon him as he
entered. He closed the door in Elzbieta's face, and went toward his
wife. "Where have you been?" he demanded.

She had her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and he saw that her face
was as white as paper, and drawn with pain. She gasped once or twice
as she tried to answer him, and then began, speaking low, and swiftly.
"Jurgis, I--I think I have been out of my mind. I started to come last
night, and I could not find the way. I walked--I walked all night, I
think, and--and I only got home--this morning."

"You needed a rest," he said, in a hard tone. "Why did you go out
again?"

He was looking her fairly in the face, and he could read the sudden fear
and wild uncertainty that leaped into her eyes. "I--I had to go to--to
the store," she gasped, almost in a whisper, "I had to go--"

"You are lying to me," said Jurgis. Then he clenched his hands and took
a step toward her. "Why do you lie to me?" he cried, fiercely. "What are
you doing that you have to lie to me?"

"Jurgis!" she exclaimed, starting up in fright. "Oh, Jurgis, how can
you?"

"You have lied to me, I say!" he cried. "You told me you had been to
Jadvyga's house that other night, and you hadn't. You had been where
you were last night--somewheres downtown, for I saw you get off the car.
Where were you?"

It was as if he had struck a knife into her. She seemed to go all to
pieces. For half a second she stood, reeling and swaying, staring at
him with horror in her eyes; then, with a cry of anguish, she tottered
forward, stretching out her arms to him. But he stepped aside,
deliberately, and let her fall. She caught herself at the side of the
bed, and then sank down, burying her face in her hands and bursting into
frantic weeping.

There came one of those hysterical crises that had so often dismayed
him. Ona sobbed and wept, her fear and anguish building themselves up
into long climaxes. Furious gusts of emotion would come sweeping over
her, shaking her as the tempest shakes the trees upon the hills; all her
frame would quiver and throb with them--it was as if some dreadful thing
rose up within her and took possession of her, torturing her, tearing
her. This thing had been wont to set Jurgis quite beside himself; but
now he stood with his lips set tightly and his hands clenched--she might
weep till she killed herself, but she should not move him this time--not
an inch, not an inch. Because the sounds she made set his blood to
running cold and his lips to quivering in spite of himself, he was glad
of the diversion when Teta Elzbieta, pale with fright, opened the door
and rushed in; yet he turned upon her with an oath. "Go out!" he cried,
"go out!" And then, as she stood hesitating, about to speak, he seized
her by the arm, and half flung her from the room, slamming the door
and barring it with a table. Then he turned again and faced Ona,
crying--"Now, answer me!"

Yet she did not hear him--she was still in the grip of the fiend. Jurgis
could see her outstretched hands, shaking and twitching, roaming
here and there over the bed at will, like living things; he could see
convulsive shudderings start in her body and run through her limbs. She
was sobbing and choking--it was as if there were too many sounds for one
throat, they came chasing each other, like waves upon the sea. Then her
voice would begin to rise into screams, louder and louder until it broke
in wild, horrible peals of laughter. Jurgis bore it until he could bear
it no longer, and then he sprang at her, seizing her by the shoulders
and shaking her, shouting into her ear: "Stop it, I say! Stop it!"

She looked up at him, out of her agony; then she fell forward at his
feet. She caught them in her hands, in spite of his efforts to step
aside, and with her face upon the floor lay writhing. It made a choking
in Jurgis' throat to hear her, and he cried again, more savagely than
before: "Stop it, I say!"

This time she heeded him, and caught her breath and lay silent, save for
the gasping sobs that wrenched all her frame. For a long minute she
lay there, perfectly motionless, until a cold fear seized her husband,
thinking that she was dying. Suddenly, however, he heard her voice,
faintly: "Jurgis! Jurgis!"

"What is it?" he said.

He had to bend down to her, she was so weak. She was pleading with him,
in broken phrases, painfully uttered: "Have faith in me! Believe me!"

"Believe what?" he cried.

"Believe that I--that I know best--that I love you! And do not ask
me--what you did. Oh, Jurgis, please, please! It is for the best--it
is--"

He started to speak again, but she rushed on frantically, heading him
off. "If you will only do it! If you will only--only believe me!
It wasn't my fault--I couldn't help it--it will be all right--it is
nothing--it is no harm. Oh, Jurgis--please, please!"

She had hold of him, and was trying to raise herself to look at him; he
could feel the palsied shaking of her hands and the heaving of the
bosom she pressed against him. She managed to catch one of his hands and
gripped it convulsively, drawing it to her face, and bathing it in her
tears. "Oh, believe me, believe me!" she wailed again; and he shouted in
fury, "I will not!"

But still she clung to him, wailing aloud in her despair: "Oh, Jurgis,
think what you are doing! It will ruin us--it will ruin us! Oh, no,
you must not do it! No, don't, don't do it. You must not do it! It
will drive me mad--it will kill me--no, no, Jurgis, I am crazy--it is
nothing. You do not really need to know. We can be happy--we can love
each other just the same. Oh, please, please, believe me!"

Her words fairly drove him wild. He tore his hands loose, and flung her
off. "Answer me," he cried. "God damn it, I say--answer me!"

She sank down upon the floor, beginning to cry again. It was like
listening to the moan of a damned soul, and Jurgis could not stand it.
He smote his fist upon the table by his side, and shouted again at her,
"Answer me!"

She began to scream aloud, her voice like the voice of some wild beast:
"Ah! Ah! I can't! I can't do it!"

"Why can't you do it?" he shouted.

"I don't know how!"

He sprang and caught her by the arm, lifting her up, and glaring into
her face. "Tell me where you were last night!" he panted. "Quick, out
with it!"

Then she began to whisper, one word at a time: "I--was in--a
house--downtown--"

"What house? What do you mean?"

She tried to hide her eyes away, but he held her. "Miss Henderson's
house," she gasped. He did not understand at first. "Miss Henderson's
house," he echoed. And then suddenly, as in an explosion, the horrible
truth burst over him, and he reeled and staggered back with a scream.
He caught himself against the wall, and put his hand to his forehead,
staring about him, and whispering, "Jesus! Jesus!"

An instant later he leaped at her, as she lay groveling at his feet.
He seized her by the throat. "Tell me!" he gasped, hoarsely. "Quick!
Who took you to that place?"

She tried to get away, making him furious; he thought it was fear, of
the pain of his clutch--he did not understand that it was the agony of
her shame. Still she answered him, "Connor."

"Connor," he gasped. "Who is Connor?"

"The boss," she answered. "The man--"