Then the old man took it and he read it and started and he cried, “It is bad news, goodwife--be ready!” “Is he ill?” she said in her same steady way. And the old man laid the letter down and took the spectacles from his eyes and he answered solemnly, staring at her, “Dead!” Then the mother threw her apron over her head and she wept. Yes, she could weep now and she wept, safely, and she wept on and on as though she knew him truly dead. She wept for all her lonely years and because her life had been so warped and lone and she wept because her destiny had been so ill and the man gone, and she wept because she dared not bear this child she had in her, and last she wept because she was a woman scorned. All the weeping she had been afraid to do lest child hear her or neighbor, now she could weep out and none need know how many were the sorrows that she wept. The women of the hamlet came running out to comfort her when they heard the news and they comforted her and cried out she must not fall ill with weeping, for there were her children still and the two good sons, and they went and fetched the sons and led them to her for comfort, and the two lads stood there, the eldest silent, pale as though in sudden illness, and the youngest bellowing because his mother wept. Suddenly in the midst of the confusion a loud howl arose and a noisier weeping than the mother’s, and it was the gossip’s, who was suddenly overcome with all the sorrow round about her, and the great oily tears ran down her cheeks and she sobbed loudly, “Look at me, poor soul--I am worse off than you, for I have no son at all--not one! I am more piteous than you, goodwife, and worse than any woman I ever saw for sorrow!” And her old sorrow came up in her so fresh and new that all the women were astonished and they turned to comfort her, and in the midst of the fray the mother went home, her two sons after her, weeping silently as she went, for she could not stay her weeping. Yes, she sat herself down and wept at her own door, and the elder lad wept silently a little too, now, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, and the little boy wept on, not understanding what it meant to have his father dead, since he could not remember what the father was, and the girl wept and pressed her hands against her eyes and moaned softly and she said, “I must weep because my father is dead--my tears burn me so--yet must I weep for my dead father!” But the mother could not weep to any end, and she knew she could not until she had done what she must do. So for the time she ceased her weeping and comforted them somewhat with her own silence while she thought what she would do.