Elzbieta was glad to have somebody to listen, and she told all their woes—­what had happened to Ona, and the jail, and the loss of their home, and Marija’s accident, and how Ona had died, and how Jurgis could get no work.  As she listened the pretty young lady’s eyes filled with tears, and in the midst of it she burst into weeping and hid her face on Elzbieta’s shoulder, quite regardless of the fact that the woman had on a dirty old wrapper and that the garret was full of fleas.  Poor Elzbieta was ashamed of herself for having told so woeful a tale, and the other had to beg and plead with her to get her to go on.  The end of it was that the young lady sent them a basket of things to eat, and left a letter that Jurgis was to take to a gentleman who was superintendent in one of the mills of the great steelworks in South Chicago.  “He will get Jurgis something to do,” the young lady had said, and added, smiling through her tears—­“If he doesn’t, he will never marry me.”

The steel-works were fifteen miles away, and as usual it was so contrived that one had to pay two fares to get there.  Far and wide the sky was flaring with the red glare that leaped from rows of towering chimneys—­for it was pitch dark when Jurgis arrived.  The vast works, a city in themselves, were surrounded by a stockade; and already a full hundred men were waiting at the gate where new hands were taken on.  Soon after daybreak whistles began to blow, and then suddenly thousands of men appeared, streaming from saloons and boardinghouses across the way, leaping from trolley cars that passed—­it seemed as if they rose out of the ground, in the dim gray light.  A river of them poured in through the gate—­and then gradually ebbed away again, until there were only a few late ones running, and the watchman pacing up and down, and the hungry strangers stamping and shivering.

Jurgis presented his precious letter.  The gatekeeper was surly, and put him through a catechism, but he insisted that he knew nothing, and as he had taken the precaution to seal his letter, there was nothing for the gatekeeper to do but send it to the person to whom it was addressed.  A messenger came back to say that Jurgis should wait, and so he came inside of the gate, perhaps not sorry enough that there were others less fortunate watching him with greedy eyes.  The great mills were getting under way—­one could hear a vast stirring, a rolling and rumbling and hammering.  Little by little the scene grew plain:  towering, black buildings here and there, long rows of shops and sheds, little railways branching everywhere, bare gray cinders underfoot and oceans of billowing black smoke above.  On one side of the grounds ran a railroad with a dozen tracks, and on the other side lay the lake, where steamers came to load.

Jurgis had time enough to stare and speculate, for it was two hours before he was summoned.  He went into the office building, where a company timekeeper interviewed him.  The superintendent was busy, he said, but he (the timekeeper) would try to find Jurgis a job.  He had never worked in a steel mill before?  But he was ready for anything?  Well, then, they would go and see.