A day or two before Thanksgiving Day there came a snowstorm.  It began in the afternoon, and by evening two inches had fallen.  Jurgis tried to wait for the women, but went into a saloon to get warm, and took two drinks, and came out and ran home to escape from the demon; there he lay down to wait for them, and instantly fell asleep.  When he opened his eyes again he was in the midst of a nightmare, and found Elzbieta shaking him and crying out.  At first he could not realize what she was saying—­Ona had not come home.  What time was it, he asked.  It was morning—­time to be up.  Ona had not been home that night!  And it was bitter cold, and a foot of snow on the ground.

Jurgis sat up with a start.  Marija was crying with fright and the children were wailing in sympathy—­little Stanislovas in addition, because the terror of the snow was upon him.  Jurgis had nothing to put on but his shoes and his coat, and in half a minute he was out of the door.  Then, however, he realized that there was no need of haste, that he had no idea where to go.  It was still dark as midnight, and the thick snowflakes were sifting down—­everything was so silent that he could hear the rustle of them as they fell.  In the few seconds that he stood there hesitating he was covered white.

He set off at a run for the yards, stopping by the way to inquire in the saloons that were open.  Ona might have been overcome on the way; or else she might have met with an accident in the machines.  When he got to the place where she worked he inquired of one of the watchmen—­there had not been any accident, so far as the man had heard.  At the time office, which he found already open, the clerk told him that Ona’s check had been turned in the night before, showing that she had left her work.

After that there was nothing for him to do but wait, pacing back and forth in the snow, meantime, to keep from freezing.  Already the yards were full of activity; cattle were being unloaded from the cars in the distance, and across the way the “beef-luggers” were toiling in the darkness, carrying two-hundred-pound quarters of bullocks into the refrigerator cars.  Before the first streaks of daylight there came the crowding throngs of workingmen, shivering, and swinging their dinner pails as they hurried by.  Jurgis took up his stand by the time-office window, where alone there was light enough for him to see; the snow fell so quick that it was only by peering closely that he could make sure that Ona did not pass him.

Seven o’clock came, the hour when the great packing machine began to move.  Jurgis ought to have been at his place in the fertilizer mill; but instead he was waiting, in an agony of fear, for Ona.  It was fifteen minutes after the hour when he saw a form emerge from the snow mist, and sprang toward it with a cry.  It was she, running swiftly; as she saw him, she staggered forward, and half fell into his outstretched arms.

“What has been the matter?” he cried, anxiously.  “Where have you been?”