de his eyes because he could not bear it. Dead!
dead! And she was only a girl, she was barely eighteen! Her life had
hardly begun--and here she lay murdered--mangled, tortured to death!

It was morning when he rose up and came down into the kitchen--haggard
and ashen gray, reeling and dazed. More of the neighbors had come in,
and they stared at him in silence as he sank down upon a chair by the
table and buried his face in his arms.

A few minutes later the front door opened; a blast of cold and snow
rushed in, and behind it little Kotrina, breathless from running, and
blue with the cold. "I'm home again!" she exclaimed. "I could hardly--"

And then, seeing Jurgis, she stopped with an exclamation. Looking from
one to another she saw that something had happened, and she asked, in a
lower voice: "What's the matter?"

Before anyone could reply, Jurgis started up; he went toward her,
walking unsteadily. "Where have you been?" he demanded.

"Selling papers with the boys," she said. "The snow--"

"Have you any money?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"How much?"

"Nearly three dollars, Jurgis."

"Give it to me."

Kotrina, frightened by his manner, glanced at the others. "Give it to
me!" he commanded again, and she put her hand into her pocket and pulled
out a lump of coins tied in a bit of rag. Jurgis took it without a word,
and went out of the door and down the street.

Three doors away was a saloon. "Whisky," he said, as he entered, and as
the man pushed him some, he tore at the rag with his teeth and pulled
out half a dollar. "How much is the bottle?" he said. "I want to get
drunk."

Chapter 20

But a big man cannot stay drunk very long on three dollars. That was
Sunday morning, and Monday night Jurgis came home, sober and sick,
realizing that he had spent every cent the family owned, and had not
bought a single instant's forgetfulness with it.

Ona was not yet buried; but the police had been notified, and on the
morrow they would put the body in a pine coffin and take it to the
potter's field. Elzbieta was out begging now, a few pennies from each of
the neighbors, to get enough to pay for a mass for her; and the children
were upstairs starving to death, while he, good-for-nothing rascal, had
been spending their money on drink. So spoke Aniele, scornfully, and
when he started toward the fire she added the information that her
kitchen was no longer for him to fill with his phosphate stinks. She
had crowded al