At last, on a Sunday, as there was no use looking for
work, Jurgis went home by stealing rides on the cars.
He found that they had been waiting for him for three
days -- there was a chance of a job for him.

It was quite a story. Little Juozapas, who was near
crazy with hunger these days, had gone out on the street
to beg for himself. Juozapas had only one leg, having
been run over by a wagon when a little child, but he had
got himself a broomstick, which he put under his arm for a
crutch. He had fallen in with some other children and
found the way to Mike Scully's dump, which lay three
or four blocks away. To this place there came every day
many hundreds of wagon-loads of garbage and trash from
the lake-front, where the rich people lived; and in the
heaps the children raked for food -- there were hunks of
bread and potato peelings and apple-cores and meat-
bones, all of it half frozen and quite unspoiled. Little
Juozapas gorged himself, and came home with a newspaper
full, which he was feeding to Antanas when his mother
came in. Elzbieta was horrified, for she did not believe
that the food out of the dumps was fit to eat. The next
day, however, when no harm came of it and Juozapas be~
gan to cry with hunger, she gave in and said that he might
go again. And that afternoon he came home with a story
of how while he had been digging away with a stick, a
lady upon the street had called him. A real fine lady, the
little boy explained, a beautiful lady; and she wanted to
know all about him, and whether he got the garbage for
chickens, and why he walked with a broomstick, and why
Ona had died, and how Jurgis had come to go to jail, and
what was the matter with Marija, and everything. In
the end she had asked where he lived, and said that she
was coming to see him, and bring him a new crutch to
walk with. She had on a hat with a bird upon it,
Juozapas added, and a long fur snake around her neck.

She really came, the very next morning, and climbed the
ladder to the garret, and stood and stared about her, turn~
ing pale at the sight of the blood stains on the floor where
Ona had died. She was a "settlement-worker," she ex~

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