soft and flabby. He had no appetite, and they could not
afford to tempt him with delicacies. It was better, he said,
that he should not eat, it was a saving. About the end of
March he had got hold of Ona's bank-book, and learned
that there was only three dollars left to them in the
world.

But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long
siege was that they lost another member of their family;
Brother Jonas disappeared. One Saturday night he did
not come home, and thereafter all their efforts to get trace
of him were futile. It was said by the boss at Durham's
that he had gotten his week's money and left there. That
might not be true, of course, for sometimes they would say
that when a man had been killed; it was the easiest way
out of it for all concerned. When, for instance, a man had
fallen into one of the rendering tanks and had been made
into pure leaf lard and peerless fertilizer, there was no use
letting the fact out and making his family unhappy.
More probable, however, was the theory that Jonas had
deserted them, and gone on the road, seeking happiness.
He had been discontented for a long time, and not with~
out some cause. He paid good board, and was yet obliged
to live in a family where nobody had enough to eat. And
Marija would keep giving them all her money, and of
course he could not but feel that he was called upon to do
the same. Then there were crying brats, and all sorts of
misery; a man would have had to be a good deal of a hero
to stand it all without grumbling, and Jonas was not in
the least a hero -- he was simply a weather-beaten old
fellow who liked to have a good supper and sit in the
corner by the fire and smoke his pipe in peace before he
went to bed. Here there was not room by the fire, and
through the winter the kitchen had seldom been warm
enough for comfort. So, with the springtime, what was
more likely than that the wild idea of escaping had come
to him? Two years he had been yoked like a horse to a
half-ton truck in Durham's dark cellars, with never a rest,
save on Sundays and four holidays in the year, and with
never a word of thanks -- only kicks and blows and curses,

[[143]]

p142 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p143w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p144

v?