It was in one of these melees that Jurgis fell into his trap.  That is the only word to describe it; it was so cruel, and so utterly not to be foreseen.  At first he hardly noticed it, it was such a slight accident—­simply that in leaping out of the way he turned his ankle.  There was a twinge of pain, but Jurgis was used to pain, and did not coddle himself.  When he came to walk home, however, he realized that it was hurting him a great deal; and in the morning his ankle was swollen out nearly double its size, and he could not get his foot into his shoe.  Still, even then, he did nothing more than swear a little, and wrapped his foot in old rags, and hobbled out to take the car.  It chanced to be a rush day at Durham’s, and all the long morning he limped about with his aching foot; by noontime the pain was so great that it made him faint, and after a couple of hours in the afternoon he was fairly beaten, and had to tell the boss.  They sent for the company doctor, and he examined the foot and told Jurgis to go home to bed, adding that he had probably laid himself up for months by his folly.  The injury was not one that Durham and Company could be held responsible for, and so that was all there was to it, so far as the doctor was concerned.

Jurgis got home somehow, scarcely able to see for the pain, and with an awful terror in his soul, Elzbieta helped him into bed and bandaged his injured foot with cold water and tried hard not to let him see her dismay; when the rest came home at night she met them outside and told them, and they, too, put on a cheerful face, saying it would only be for a week or two, and that they would pull him through.

When they had gotten him to sleep, however, they sat by the kitchen fire and talked it over in frightened whispers.  They were in for a siege, that was plainly to be seen.  Jurgis had only about sixty dollars in the bank, and the slack season was upon them.  Both Jonas and Marija might soon be earning no more than enough to pay their board, and besides that there were only the wages of Ona and the pittance of the little boy.  There was the rent to pay, and still some on the furniture; there was the insurance just due, and every month there was sack after sack of coal.  It was January, midwinter, an awful time to have to face privation.  Deep snows would come again, and who would carry Ona to her work now?  She might lose her place—­she was almost certain to lose it.  And then little Stanislovas began to whimper—­who would take care of him?

It was dreadful that an accident of this sort, that no man can help, should have meant such suffering.  The bitterness of it was the daily food and drink of Jurgis.  It was of no use for them to try to deceive him; he knew as much about the situation as they did, and he knew that the family might literally starve to death.  The worry of it fairly ate him up—­he began to look haggard the first two or three days of it.  In truth, it was almost