midnight
It would not help to feed her and her child ; she would certainly lose her place , while he -- what was to happen to him God only knew . Half the night he paced the floor , wrestling with this nightmare ; and when he was exhausted he lay down , trying to sleep , but finding instead , for the first time in his life , that his brain was too much for him . In the cell next to him was a drunken wife-beater and in the one beyond a yelling maniac . At midnight they opened the station house to the homeless wanderers who were crowded about the door , shivering in the winter blast , and they thronged into the corridor outside of the cells . Some of them stretched themselves out on the bare stone floor and fell to snoring , others sat up , laughing and talking , cursing and quarreling . The air was fetid with their breath , yet in spite of this some of them smelled Jurgis and called down the torments of hell upon him , while he lay in a far corner of his cell , counting the throbbings of the blood in his forehead . They had brought him his supper , which was `` duffers and dope '' -- being hunks of dry bread on a tin plate , and coffee , called `` dope '' because it was drugged to keep the prisoners quiet .