the place. Then, too, a still more dreadful thing hap~
pened to him; he worked in a place where his feet were
soaked in chemicals, and it was not long before they had
eaten through his new boots. Then sores began to break
out on his feet, and grow worse and worse. Whether it
was that his blood was bad, or there had been a cut, he
could not say; but he asked the men about it, and learned
that it was a regular thing -- it was the saltpeter. Every
one felt it, sooner or later, and then it was all up with him,
at least for that sort of work. The sores would never
heal -- in the end his toes would drop off, if he did not
quit. Yet old Antanas would not quit; he saw the suf~
fering of his family, and he remembered what it had cost
him to get a job. So he tied up his feet, and went on
limping about and coughing, until at last he fell to pieces,
all at once and in a heap, like the One-Horse Shay.
They carried him to a dry place and laid him on the floor,
and that night two of the men helped him home. The
poor old man was put to bed, and though he tried it every
morning until the end, he never could get up again. He
would lie there and cough and cough, day and night,
wasting away to a mere skeleton. There came a time
when there was so little flesh on him that the bones began
to poke through -- which was a horrible thing to see or
even to think of. And one night he had a choking fit,
and a little river of blood came out of his mouth. The
family, wild with terror, sent for a doctor, and paid half
a dollar to be told that there was nothing to be done.
Mercifully the doctor did not say this so that the old man
could hear, for he was still clinging to the faith that
tomorrow or next day he would be better, and could go
back to his job. The company had sent word to him that
they would keep it for him -- or rather Jurgis had bribed
one of the men to come one Sunday afternoon and say
they had. Dede Antanas continued to believe it, while
three more hemorrhages came; and then at last one morn~
ing they found him stiff and cold. Things were not
going well with them then, and though it nearly broke
Teta Elzbieta's heart, they were forced to dispense with

[[91]]

p090 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p091w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p092

v?