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This depot was within the danger line for Jurgis in the "Levee" district, where he was known; but he went there, all the same, for he was desperate, and beginning to think of even the Bridewell as a place of refuge.
All these horrors afflicted Jurgis all the more cruelly, because he was always contrasting them with the opportunities he had lost.
Now and then Jurgis gazes at her hungrily he has long since forgotten his shyness; but then the crowd is there, and he still waits and watches the door, where a carriage is supposed to come. It does not, and finally he will wait no longer, but comes up to Ona, who turns white and trembles. He puts her shawl about her and then his own coat.
No one answered him, they sat staring at him with their pale faces. He cried again: "Well?" And then, by the light of the smoky lamp, he saw Marija who sat nearest him, shaking her head slowly. "Not yet," she said. And Jurgis gave a cry of dismay. "Not yet?" Again Marija's head shook. The poor fellow stood dumfounded. "I don't hear her," he gasped.
Jurgis, as a beggar, was simply a blundering amateur in competition with organized and scientific professionalism. He was just out of the hospital but the story was worn threadbare, and how could he prove it? He had his arm in a sling and it was a device a regular beggar's little boy would have scorned.
Jurgis was standing by the table, and he caught himself with his hand; his head sank and his arms shook it looked as if he were going to collapse. Then suddenly Aniele got up and came hobbling toward him, fumbling in her skirt pocket. She drew out a dirty rag, in one corner of which she had something tied. "Here, Jurgis!" she said, "I have some money. Palauk! See!"
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?"
He stood upon the steps, bewildered; he could hardly believe that it was true, that the sky was above him again and the open street before him; that he was a free man. But then the cold began to strike through his clothes, and he started quickly away. There had been a heavy snow, and now a thaw had set in; fine sleety rain was falling, driven by a wind that pierced Jurgis to the bone.
The enterprising newspaper reporter had taken all this information to his family, and told how they had received it. Since it was Jurgis's first experience, these details naturally caused him some worriment; but the other laughed coolly it was the way of the game, and there was no helping it. Before long Jurgis would think no more of it than they did in the yards of knocking out a bullock.
And yet so many strange things kept coming to Jurgis' notice every day! He tried to persuade his father to have nothing to do with the offer. But old Antanas had begged until he was worn out, and all his courage was gone; he wanted a job, any sort of a job.
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