were paid by the hour, and paid no more for being interested.  Also they knew that if they were hurt they would be flung aside and forgotten—­and still they would hurry to their task by dangerous short cuts, would use methods that were quicker and more effective in spite of the fact that they were also risky.  His fourth day at his work Jurgis saw a man stumble while running in front of a car, and have his foot mashed off, and before he had been there three weeks he was witness of a yet more dreadful accident.  There was a row of brick furnaces, shining white through every crack with the molten steel inside.  Some of these were bulging dangerously, yet men worked before them, wearing blue glasses when they opened and shut the doors.  One morning as Jurgis was passing, a furnace blew out, spraying two men with a shower of liquid fire.  As they lay screaming and rolling upon the ground in agony, Jurgis rushed to help them, and as a result he lost a good part of the skin from the inside of one of his hands.  The company doctor bandaged it up, but he got no other thanks from any one, and was laid up for eight working days without any pay.

Most fortunately, at this juncture, Elzbieta got the long-awaited chance to go at five o’clock in the morning and help scrub the office floors of one of the packers.  Jurgis came home and covered himself with blankets to keep warm, and divided his time between sleeping and playing with little Antanas.  Juozapas was away raking in the dump a good part of the time, and Elzbieta and Marija were hunting for more work.

Antanas was now over a year and a half old, and was a perfect talking machine.  He learned so fast that every week when Jurgis came home it seemed to him as if he had a new child.  He would sit down and listen and stare at him, and give vent to delighted exclamations—­“Palauk!  Muma!  Tu mano szirdele!” The little fellow was now really the one delight that Jurgis had in the world—­his one hope, his one victory.  Thank God, Antanas was a boy!  And he was as tough as a pine knot, and with the appetite of a wolf.  Nothing had hurt him, and nothing could hurt him; he had come through all the suffering and deprivation unscathed—­only shriller-voiced and more determined in his grip upon life.  He was a terrible child to manage, was Antanas, but his father did not mind that—­he would watch him and smile to himself with satisfaction.  The more of a fighter he was the better—­he would need to fight before he got through.

Jurgis had got the habit of buying the Sunday paper whenever he had the money; a most wonderful paper could be had for only five cents, a whole armful, with all the news of the world set forth in big headlines, that Jurgis could spell out slowly, with the children to help him at the long words.  There was battle and murder and sudden death—­it was marvelous how they ever heard about so many entertaining and thrilling happenings; the stories must be all true, for surely no man could have made such things up,