sang to us; how, when need be, she chid
us; how, with a hand for each, she took us as children to church; how
she kissed us both at nights, and gave us our porridge when we started
for the hills in the morning. In all this she never by a sign betrayed
that one of us was her son and the other a stranger. Even to the last,
on the day she died, the words she spoke to me, I was convinced, she
would equally have spoken to Tim, had he, not I, been there to hear
them.

Could it be possible that she did not herself know? Any mother who
reads this will, I think, scoff at the notion; and yet I think it was
so. Weak and ill as she was when it all happened, bewildered and dazed
by the murder of her master and the terrible suspicion thrown on her
husband, lying for weeks after in a half swoon, and believing herself at
the gate of death, I think, in spite of all the mothers in Ireland, that
when at last she came back to life, and looked on the two little fellows
nestled in the bed at her side, she knew not the one from the other.

My father, I was sure, if he even knew that one of us was not his own
boy, neither knew nor concerned himself which was which, so long as he
kept his honour in good-humour.

But as regarded Biddy McQuilkin, it was different. She was not ill or
blind or in mortal fear when it all happened. If any one could tell, it
was she. And she, unless all reports were false, slept in the pit of
the guillotine in Paris, beside her last master and mistress. It was
not likely that the Republic One and Indivisible, when it swept away the
old couple, would overlook their faithful and inseparable attendant.

So, after all, it seemed that mystery was to hang over Tim and me still.
I could have been happy had the paper said outright, "Tim is the son of
Terence Gorman." But to feel that as much might, with equal
probability, be said of me, paralysed my purpose and obscured my path.
How was I to set wrong right? As for Tim, it was evident from his brief
note, written at a time when he did not know if I had survived the wreck
of the _Kestrel_ or not, that the matter concerned him little compared
with the rebellious undertaking on which he was just now unhappily
embarked.

Tim was, I knew, more of a natural gentleman than I, which might mean
gentler blood. On the other hand, I, of the two of us, was less like
Mike Gallagher in looks. Who was to decide between us? And meanwhile
this Maurice Gorman--

That remind