The dirty pillow-case was full to bursting.

She took advantage of the supper hour to carry her bundle around the corner and up into the alley where Zerkow lived.
When Maria entered his shop, Zerkow had just come in from his daily rounds.

His decrepit wagon stood in front of his door like a stranded wreck; the miserable horse, with its lamentable swollen joints, fed greedily upon an armful of spoiled hay in a shed at the back.
The interior of the junk shop was dark and damp, and foul with all manner of choking odors.

On the walls, on the floor, and hanging from the rafters was a world of debris, dust-blackened, rust-corroded.
Everything was there, every trade was represented, every class of society; things of iron and cloth and wood; all the detritus that a great city sloughs off in its daily life.

Zerkow's junk shop was the last abiding-place, the almshouse, of such articles as had outlived their usefulness.
Maria found Zerkow himself in the back room, cooking some sort of a meal over an alcohol stove.