reality of it--to the sight of strange people
living in his house, hanging their curtains to his windows, staring at
him with hostile eyes! It was monstrous, it was unthinkable--they could
not do it--it could not be true! Only think what he had suffered for
that house--what miseries they had all suffered for it--the price they
had paid for it!

The whole long agony came back to him. Their sacrifices in the
beginning, their three hundred dollars that they had scraped together,
all they owned in the world, all that stood between them and starvation!
And then their toil, month by month, to get together the twelve dollars,
and the interest as well, and now and then the taxes, and the other
charges, and the repairs, and what not! Why, they had put their very
souls into their payments on that house, they had paid for it with their
sweat and tears--yes, more, with their very lifeblood. Dede Antanas had
died of the struggle to earn that money--he would have been alive and
strong today if he had not had to work in Durham's dark cellars to earn
his share. And Ona, too, had given her health and strength to pay for
it--she was wrecked and ruined because of it; and so was he, who had
been a big, strong man three years ago, and now sat here shivering,
broken, cowed, weeping like a hysterical child. Ah! they had cast their
all into the fight; and they had lost, they had lost! All that they had
paid was gone--every cent of it. And their house was gone--they were
back where they had started from, flung out into the cold to starve and
freeze!

Jurgis could see all the truth now--could see himself, through the whole
long course of events, the victim of ravenous vultures that had torn
into his vitals and devoured him; of fiends that had racked and tortured
him, mocking him, meantime, jeering in his face. Ah, God, the horror
of it, the monstrous, hideous, demoniacal wickedness of it! He and his
family, helpless women and children, struggling to live, ignorant and
defenseless and forlorn as they were--and the enemies that had been
lurking for them, crouching upon their trail and thirsting for their
blood! That first lying circular, that smooth-tongued slippery agent!
That trap of the extra payments, the interest, and all the other charges
that they had not the means to pay, and would never have attempted to
pay! And then all the tricks of the packers, their masters, the tyrants
who ruled them--the shutdowns and the scarcity of work, the irr