"Basil used to go down and sit at the edge of the colored settlement and hear them sing. It was as though he let himself dwell on all evil things."
"Oh, mother, not evil things!" protested Dr. Lister.
"Some of the songs were evil. You could hear him singing them afterwards in his room. They were songs that made you shiver."
"Did he ever drink or gamble, or do anything of that kind?"
"I don't know certainly. My father kept some things from me. I know, though, that my father fetched him from the tavern once. He used to sing sometimes as he came home. You could hear him coming from far away."
"But, mother, surely you can see in 'Bitter Bread' why he went walking to the Ragged Mountains! He wanted new impressions, different impressions from those of humdrum people. Did you never suspect that he was trying to write? Did you never see anything he wrote? Didn't your father realize that here was no ordinary boy, here no ordinary talent?"
"My father found one of his stories and read it. It was then that he told Basil that he could not stay if he continued in his course. My father really didn't mean that he was to go away, but he took him at his word. Then we tried to find him again and again. His going away killed my father. All the clues led nowhere. We didn't hear anything about him till he was dead and buried. Then my father died." Mrs. Lister became excited. "I feel as though it would kill me. I thought at the time I couldn't live. Everything came at once."
"But, mother, it is all so long ago!"
"It is all as plain and dreadful as though it were yesterday. I have been afraid for twenty years that people would find out about Basil, that they would put this and that together. I have thought of Mrs. Scott finding it out and of how she would talk and talk and of all the tradespeople knowing, and—"
"But, my darling, what could they know?"