chickens
has come to roost."

After nightfall she went into the kitchen where she sat a dreary while
before her stove, leaning forward in her unlovely, ruminating pose.
Through the open draft of the stove the red coals within it glowed,
casting three little bars of light upon the floor. Now and then a stick
burned in two and settled down, showering sparks through the grate.
These little flashes lit up her brown and somber face, and discovered
the slow tears upon her weathered cheeks. For a long time she sat thus,
then at last she lifted her head and looked around the room. Her table
stood as she had left it in the morning, no food had passed her lips
since then. But the frantic turmoil of the first hours after Joe had
been led away to jail had quieted.

A plan of action had shaped itself in her mind. In the morning she would
go to Shelbyville and seek her husband's old friend, Colonel Henry
Price, to solicit his advice and assistance. In a manner comforted by
this resolution, she prepared herself a pot of coffee and some food.
After the loneliest and most hopeless meal that she ever had eaten in
her life, she went to bed.

In the house of Isom Chase, where neighbors sat to watch the night out
beside the shrouded body, there was a waste of oil in many lamps, such
an illumination that it seemed a wonder that old Isom did not rise up
from his gory bed to turn down the wicks and speak reproof. Everybody
must have a light. If an errand for the living or a service for the dead
called one from this room to that, there must be a light. That was a
place of tragic mystery, a place of violence and death. If light had
been lacking there on the deeds of Isom Chase, on his hoardings and
hidings away; on the hour of his death and the mystery of it, then all
this must be balanced tonight by gleams in every window, beams through
every crevice; lamps here, lanterns there, candles in cupboards, cellar,
and nook.

Let there be light in the house of Isom Chase, and in the sharp
espionage of curious eyes, for dark days hang over it, and the young
widow who draws the pity of all because she cannot weep.

No matter how hard a woman's life with a man has been, when he dies she
is expected to mourn. That was the standard of fealty and respect in the
neighborhood of Isom Chase, as it is in more enlightened communities in
other parts of the world. A woman should weep for her man, no matter
what bruises on body his heavy hand may leave behind