He was paying a high price for a mild drunk and proof that Zuska had soft thighs.

He saw them appear in the entrance of the building and went toward them. Zuska, looking everywhere at once, was carrying two bundles; Mihula had a wooden box on his shoulder and another bundle at the end of his arm. He greeted them jovially: "I was beginning to think they had sent you back to the old country."

They put their bundles down. "I am glad to be out of there," Mihula admitted.

Kracha glanced at Zuska. "Well, what do you think of America.'^"

She smiled and shrugged, her eyes bright with excitement.

Mihula was watching for his cousin, who had promised to meet them. They were going to spend a few days with him before going on to Pittsburgh, and Kracha had already been urged to join them for a night at least. He had declined; the sooner he and Zuska were separated the better. Out of politeness, since he wouldn't have recognized Mihula's cousin if he'd stumbled over him, he craned his neck for five minutes; then he said, "Well, I shall say good-by now."

"Are you leaving right away?"

He nodded. "I go across the ferry and take a train there. In five, six hours I should be in White Haven."

"When we go to Pittsburgh we will have to ride all day and most of the night." It was half a boast.

"You have my sister's address," Zuska said. "Let us hear from you."

"You will."

He shook hands with Mihula, then with Zuska. "Till we meet again."

"God willing."

"Who knows .J^ We may all be millionaires by then.**

''Achr

"It has been a pleasure to know you both."

"Let me thank you again for the little party you made on my birthday."

"It was nothing." He picked up his bundle. "Take care of yourselves."

''1st s Bohom;' Mihula said. "Go with God."

"5 Bohomr

So he left them.

By showing his paper to every policeman he encountered, he reached the ferry house without mishap. There he learned finally, for good and all, that a ticket to White Haven did indeed cost more than fifty-five cents. This last hope extinguished, he crossed to New Jersey, where a uniformed guard pounced on him as soon as he appeared and was so insistent on helping him that Kracha brought out his paper. The guard escorted him briskly to a ticket window. After a minute he escorted him, almost as briskly, away from it, his expression implying that never again would he trust a human being. Kracha eyed him sardonically and a moment later found himself on the street.

With a river at his back there was only one way to go. He walked until he was out of the city, in the countryside; by that time it was getting dark. He ate some of the bread and sausage he

had left home with — steerage food was notoriously vile — drank from his bottle of water and went to sleep in a haystack.

After that he asked his way by showing his paper. Most people were kindly. Sometimes he got a lift on a wagon, but he walked ten miles for every one he rode. He avoided towns when he could. He let his beard grow, and washed his socks and feet every day but did not change his clothes. When his bread and sausage gave out he knocked on the back doors of farmhouses and begged food by gestures, an open mouth, bunched fingers.

He slept in fields, in haystacks, in barns. Sometimes the nights were bitterly cold; in the morning the fields would be hoary with frost. He had really bad weather only once, a day and a night when the rain fell steadily. He walked through the rain until he came to a small shanty and took shelter there. It was a one-time cowshed by the smell of it and a tattered County Fair poster seemed to be all that was holding it together.