out together, an hour before daybreak, to try to get to the
yards. About noon the last two came back, the boy scream~
ing with pain. His fingers were all frosted, it seemed.
They had had to give up trying to get to the yards, and
had nearly perished in a drift. All that they knew how
to do was to hold the frozen fingers near the fire, and
so little Stanislovas spent most of the day dancing about
in horrible agony, till Jurgis flew into a passion of nervous
rage and swore like a madman, declaring that he would
kill him if he did not stop. All that day and night the
family was half-crazed with fear that Ona and the boy had
lost their places; and in the morning they set out earlier
than ever, after the little fellow had been beaten with a
stick by Jurgis. There could be no trifling in a case like
this, it was a matter of life and death; little Stanislovas
could not be expected to realize that he might a great deal
better freeze in the snow-drift than lose his job at the lard-
machine. Ona was quite certain that she would find her
place gone, and was all unnerved when she finally got to
Brown's, and found that the forelady herself had failed to
come, and was therefore compelled to be lenient.

One of the consequences of this episode was that the
first joints of three of the little boy's fingers were perma~
nently disabled, and another that thereafter he always had
to be beaten before he set out to work, whenever there
was fresh snow on the ground. Jurgis was called upon to
do the beating, and as it hurt his foot he did it with a
vengeance; but it did not tend to add to the sweetness of
his temper. They say that the best dog will turn cross
if he be kept chained all the time, and it was the same
with the man; he had not a thing to do all day but lie and
curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to curse
everything.

This was never for very long, however, for when Ona
began to cry, Jurgis could not stay angry. The poor fel~
low looked like a homeless ghost, with his cheeks sunken
in and his long black hair straggling into his eyes; he was
too discouraged to cut it, or to think about his appearance.
His muscles were wasting away, and what were left were

[[142]]

p141 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p142w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p143

v?