d credit; they would borrow a little from
the Szedvilases, whose delicatessen store was tottering on the brink
of ruin; the neighbors would come and help them a little--poor, sick
Jadvyga would bring a few spare pennies, as she always did when people
were starving, and Tamoszius Kuszleika would bring them the proceeds of
a night's fiddling. So they would struggle to hang on until he got out
of jail--or would they know that he was in jail, would they be able to
find out anything about him? Would they be allowed to see him--or was it
to be part of his punishment to be kept in ignorance about their fate?

His mind would hang upon the worst possibilities; he saw Ona ill and
tortured, Marija out of her place, little Stanislovas unable to get
to work for the snow, the whole family turned out on the street. God
Almighty! would they actually let them lie down in the street and die?
Would there be no help even then--would they wander about in the snow
till they froze? Jurgis had never seen any dead bodies in the streets,
but he had seen people evicted and disappear, no one knew where;
and though the city had a relief bureau, though there was a charity
organization society in the stockyards district, in all his life there
he had never heard of either of them. They did not advertise their
activities, having more calls than they could attend to without that.

--So on until morning. Then he had another ride in the patrol wagon,
along with the drunken wife-beater and the maniac, several "plain
drunks" and "saloon fighters," a burglar, and two men who had been
arrested for stealing meat from the packing houses. Along with them he
was driven into a large, white-walled room, stale-smelling and
crowded. In front, upon a raised platform behind a rail, sat a stout,
florid-faced personage, with a nose broken out in purple blotches.

Our friend realized vaguely that he was about to be tried. He wondered
what for--whether or not his victim might be dead, and if so, what they
would do with him. Hang him, perhaps, or beat him to death--nothing
would have surprised Jurgis, who knew little of the laws. Yet he had
picked up gossip enough to have it occur to him that the loud-voiced man
upon the bench might be the notorious Justice Callahan, about whom the
people of Packingtown spoke with bated breath.

"Pat" Callahan--"Growler" Pat, as he had been known before he ascended
the bench--had begun life as a butcher boy and a bruiser of local
reputat