hing and calling! What with plenty to eat and
fresh air and exercise that was taken as it pleased him, he would waken
from his sleep and start off not knowing what to do with his energy,
stretching his arms, laughing, singing old songs of home that came back
to him. Now and then, of course, he could not help but think of little
Antanas, whom he should never see again, whose little voice he should
never hear; and then he would have to battle with himself. Sometimes at
night he would waken dreaming of Ona, and stretch out his arms to her,
and wet the ground with his tears. But in the morning he would get up
and shake himself, and stride away again to battle with the world.

He never asked where he was nor where he was going; the country was big
enough, he knew, and there was no danger of his coming to the end of it.
And of course he could always have company for the asking--everywhere he
went there were men living just as he lived, and whom he was welcome to
join. He was a stranger at the business, but they were not clannish, and
they taught him all their tricks--what towns and villages it was best
to keep away from, and how to read the secret signs upon the fences, and
when to beg and when to steal, and just how to do both. They laughed at
his ideas of paying for anything with money or with work--for they got
all they wanted without either. Now and then Jurgis camped out with
a gang of them in some woodland haunt, and foraged with them in the
neighborhood at night. And then among them some one would "take a shine"
to him, and they would go off together and travel for a week, exchanging
reminiscences.

Of these professional tramps a great many had, of course, been shiftless
and vicious all their lives. But the vast majority of them had been
workingmen, had fought the long fight as Jurgis had, and found that it
was a losing fight, and given up. Later on he encountered yet another
sort of men, those from whose ranks the tramps were recruited, men who
were homeless and wandering, but still seeking work--seeking it in the
harvest fields. Of these there was an army, the huge surplus labor army
of society; called into being under the stern system of nature, to
do the casual work of the world, the tasks which were transient and
irregular, and yet which had to be done. They did not know that they
were such, of course; they only knew that they sought the job, and that
the job was fleeting. In the early summer they would be in Texa