that it would not do, and tramped the full fortnight's
journey that lay between him and Ona.

He found an unexpected state of affairs -- for the girl's
father had died, and his estate was tied up with creditors;
Jurgis's heart leaped as he realized that now the prize was
within his reach. There was Elzbieta Lukoszaite, Teta,
or Aunt, as they called her, Ona's stepmother, and there
were her six children, of all ages. There was also her
brother Jonas, a dried-up little man who had worked upon
the farm. They were people of great consequence, as it
seemed to Jurgis, fresh out of the woods; Ona knew how
to read, and knew many other things that he did not
know; and now the farm had been sold, and the whole
family was adrift -- all they owned in the world being
about seven hundred roubles, which is half as many dol~
lars. They would have had three times that, but it had
gone to court, and the judge had decided against them, and
it had cost the balance to get him to change his decision.

Ona might have married and left them, but she would
not, for she loved Teta Elzbieta. It was Jonas who sug~
gested that they all go to America, where a friend of his
had gotten rich. He would work, for his part, and the
women would work, and some of the children, doubtless
-- they would live somehow. Jurgis, too, had heard of
America. That was a country where, they said, a man
might earn three roubles a day; and Jurgis figured what
three roubles a day would mean, with prices as they were
where he lived, and decided forthwith that he would go
to America and marry, and be a rich man in the bargain.
In that country, rich or poor, a man was free, it was said;
he did not have to go into the army, he did not have to
pay out his money to rascally officials, -- he might do as he
pleased, and count himself as good as any other man. So
America was a place of which lovers and young people
dreamed. If one could only manage to get the price of a
passage, he could count his troubles at an end.

It was arranged that they should leave the following
spring, and meantime Jurgis sold himself to a contractor
for a certain time, and tramped nearly four hundred miles

[[25]]

p024 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p025w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p026

v?