oad tracks, and so the wind had
full sweep.

After walking a ways, Jurgis met a little ragamuffin whom he hailed:
"Hey, sonny!" The boy cocked one eye at him--he knew that Jurgis was a
"jailbird" by his shaven head. "Wot yer want?" he queried.

"How do you go to the stockyards?" Jurgis demanded.

"I don't go," replied the boy.

Jurgis hesitated a moment, nonplussed. Then he said, "I mean which is
the way?"

"Why don't yer say so then?" was the response, and the boy pointed to
the northwest, across the tracks. "That way."

"How far is it?" Jurgis asked. "I dunno," said the other. "Mebbe twenty
miles or so."

"Twenty miles!" Jurgis echoed, and his face fell. He had to walk every
foot of it, for they had turned him out of jail without a penny in his
pockets.

Yet, when he once got started, and his blood had warmed with walking,
he forgot everything in the fever of his thoughts. All the dreadful
imaginations that had haunted him in his cell now rushed into his mind
at once. The agony was almost over--he was going to find out; and he
clenched his hands in his pockets as he strode, following his flying
desire, almost at a run. Ona--the baby--the family--the house--he would
know the truth about them all! And he was coming to the rescue--he was
free again! His hands were his own, and he could help them, he could do
battle for them against the world.

For an hour or so he walked thus, and then he began to look about him.
He seemed to be leaving the city altogether. The street was turning into
a country road, leading out to the westward; there were snow-covered
fields on either side of him. Soon he met a farmer driving a two-horse
wagon loaded with straw, and he stopped him.

"Is this the way to the stockyards?" he asked.

The farmer scratched his head. "I dunno jest where they be," he said.
"But they're in the city somewhere, and you're going dead away from it
now."

Jurgis looked dazed. "I was told this was the way," he said.

"Who told you?"

"A boy."

"Well, mebbe he was playing a joke on ye. The best thing ye kin do is to
go back, and when ye git into town ask a policeman. I'd take ye in, only
I've come a long ways an' I'm loaded heavy. Git up!"

So Jurgis turned and followed, and toward the end of the morning he
began to see Chicago again. Past endless blocks of two-story shanties
he walked, along wooden sidewalks and unpaved pathways treacherous with
deep slush holes. Every few blocks there would be a