oung fellow had an
amused contempt for Jurgis, as a sort of working mule; he, too, had
felt the world's injustice, but instead of bearing it patiently, he had
struck back, and struck hard. He was striking all the time--there was
war between him and society. He was a genial freebooter, living off the
enemy, without fear or shame. He was not always victorious, but then
defeat did not mean annihilation, and need not break his spirit.

Withal he was a goodhearted fellow--too much so, it appeared. His story
came out, not in the first day, nor the second, but in the long hours
that dragged by, in which they had nothing to do but talk and nothing
to talk of but themselves. Jack Duane was from the East; he was a
college-bred man--had been studying electrical engineering. Then his
father had met with misfortune in business and killed himself; and there
had been his mother and a younger brother and sister. Also, there was an
invention of Duane's; Jurgis could not understand it clearly, but it had
to do with telegraphing, and it was a very important thing--there were
fortunes in it, millions upon millions of dollars. And Duane had been
robbed of it by a great company, and got tangled up in lawsuits and lost
all his money. Then somebody had given him a tip on a horse race, and he
had tried to retrieve his fortune with another person's money, and had
to run away, and all the rest had come from that. The other asked
him what had led him to safe-breaking--to Jurgis a wild and appalling
occupation to think about. A man he had met, his cell mate had
replied--one thing leads to another. Didn't he ever wonder about his
family, Jurgis asked. Sometimes, the other answered, but not often--he
didn't allow it. Thinking about it would make it no better. This wasn't
a world in which a man had any business with a family; sooner or later
Jurgis would find that out also, and give up the fight and shift for
himself.

Jurgis was so transparently what he pretended to be that his cell mate
was as open with him as a child; it was pleasant to tell him adventures,
he was so full of wonder and admiration, he was so new to the ways of
the country. Duane did not even bother to keep back names and places--he
told all his triumphs and his failures, his loves and his griefs. Also
he introduced Jurgis to many of the other prisoners, nearly half of whom
he knew by name. The crowd had already given Jurgis a name--they called
him "he stinker." This was cruel, but