In the evening the same thing had to be done again; and because Jurgis could not tell what hour of the night he would get off, he got a saloon-keeper to let Ona sit and wait for him in a corner. Once it was eleven o’clock at night, and black as the pit, but still they got home.

That blizzard knocked many a man out, for the crowd outside begging for work was never greater, and the packers would not wait long for anyone. When it was over, the soul of Jurgis was a song, for he had met the enemy and conquered, and felt himself the master of his fate.⁠—So it might be with some monarch of the forest that has vanquished his foes in fair fight, and then falls into some cowardly trap in the nighttime.