rying satchels for railroad passengers
was a pre-empted one--whenever he essayed it, eight or ten men and boys
would fall upon him and force him to run for his life. They always
had the policeman "squared," and so there was no use in expecting
protection.

That Jurgis did not starve to death was due solely to the pittance the
children brought him. And even this was never certain. For one thing the
cold was almost more than the children could bear; and then they, too,
were in perpetual peril from rivals who plundered and beat them. The law
was against them, too--little Vilimas, who was really eleven, but did
not look to be eight, was stopped on the streets by a severe old lady in
spectacles, who told him that he was too young to be working and that
if he did not stop selling papers she would send a truant officer after
him. Also one night a strange man caught little Kotrina by the arm and
tried to persuade her into a dark cellar-way, an experience which filled
her with such terror that she was hardly to be kept at work.

At last, on a Sunday, as there was no use looking for work, Jurgis went
home by stealing rides on the cars. He found that they had been waiting
for him for three days--there was a chance of a job for him.

It was quite a story. Little Juozapas, who was near crazy with hunger
these days, had gone out on the street to beg for himself. Juozapas had
only one leg, having been run over by a wagon when a little child,
but he had got himself a broomstick, which he put under his arm for a
crutch. He had fallen in with some other children and found the way to
Mike Scully's dump, which lay three or four blocks away. To this place
there came every day many hundreds of wagon-loads of garbage and trash
from the lake front, where the rich people lived; and in the heaps the
children raked for food--there were hunks of bread and potato peelings
and apple cores and meat bones, all of it half frozen and quite
unspoiled. Little Juozapas gorged himself, and came home with a
newspaper full, which he was feeding to Antanas when his mother came in.
Elzbieta was horrified, for she did not believe that the food out of the
dumps was fit to eat. The next day, however, when no harm came of it and
Juozapas began to cry with hunger, she gave in and said that he might go
again. And that afternoon he came home with a story of how while he had
been digging away with a stick, a lady upon the street had called him.
A real fine lady, the