a choking fit, and a little river of blood came out of his mouth. The
family, wild with terror, sent for a doctor, and paid half a dollar to
be told that there was nothing to be done. Mercifully the doctor did not
say this so that the old man could hear, for he was still clinging to
the faith that tomorrow or next day he would be better, and could go
back to his job. The company had sent word to him that they would keep
it for him--or rather Jurgis had bribed one of the men to come one
Sunday afternoon and say they had. Dede Antanas continued to believe
it, while three more hemorrhages came; and then at last one morning they
found him stiff and cold. Things were not going well with them then,
and though it nearly broke Teta Elzbieta's heart, they were forced to
dispense with nearly all the decencies of a funeral; they had only a
hearse, and one hack for the women and children; and Jurgis, who was
learning things fast, spent all Sunday making a bargain for these, and
he made it in the presence of witnesses, so that when the man tried to
charge him for all sorts of incidentals, he did not have to pay. For
twenty-five years old Antanas Rudkus and his son had dwelt in the forest
together, and it was hard to part in this way; perhaps it was just as
well that Jurgis had to give all his attention to the task of having
a funeral without being bankrupted, and so had no time to indulge in
memories and grief.


Now the dreadful winter was come upon them. In the forests, all summer
long, the branches of the trees do battle for light, and some of them
lose and die; and then come the raging blasts, and the storms of snow
and hail, and strew the ground with these weaker branches. Just so it
was in Packingtown; the whole district braced itself for the struggle
that was an agony, and those whose time was come died off in hordes.
All the year round they had been serving as cogs in the great packing