"Basil was different from other children even when he was a little boy. I remember that my mother said that he used to require less sleep than other children, and that when she would go to his crib, she would find him lying awake and staring in the strangest way at nothing. She used to be afraid when he was a little boy that he might go blind, he looked at her so steadily. He never cried loudly like other children when he was tired or hungry, but sat with great tears rolling down his cheeks. Even as a little boy he liked to be alone. He was forever disappearing and being found in queer places, such as a pew in the college church in the dark. Sometimes he would sit alone in the dark tank room in the third story. He said he had 'strange thoughts' there. "As he grew older, he would not accommodate himself to the ways of the household, would not come to meals regularly. He didn't seem to care whether he ate or not. He didn't come to breakfast on time, and he would not go to bed at the proper hour. Then my father said he could not have any breakfast, and my father took his lamp away at nine o'clock. "He would not study the subjects which were assigned to him. It was almost intolerable to my father as president of the college. He would not even open his mathematics. He said life was too short. I believe that was the only time he ever said anything in answer to my father. He took punishment without even crying out." "Punishment!" repeated Dr. Lister. Mrs. Lister gasped. "Once or twice my father punished him--corporally. "Once he went away on a walking trip to the Ragged Mountains alone. We didn't know where he had gone, and when people asked where he was, we had to--to invent. My father used to try to pretend that it made no difference, that he had done his best and that God would not hold him responsible. But I used to hear him at his window at night. He used to pray there. "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?"