At breakfast the faces were stolid and white as frost. The father answered me only when I said good-by.
He said he hardly knew whether I had had anything to eat, or whether any one had been good to me. “You just had to take care of yourself.” The son, feeling the demand of hospitality in his father’s voice, walked to the road with me. He asked if I was walking to Asheville.
“Yes, by way of Mount Toxaway and Brevard.”
He told me it was good walking all the way, and added, in a difficult burst of confidence, “I am going to Asheville.”
“Why not come along with me?” I asked. I meant it heartily.
He said he had to take horseback, and then the railway. He had to be there to-morrow.
“What’s the hurry?”
“I have to witness in a whisky case, an internal revenue case.”
He said it like a Spanish Protestant called before the inquisition.