Arthur
Dillon. Judy began to laugh. "Prove that he's Arthur Dillon! Faith, an'
long I'd wait for a gold mine if I had to prove I was Judy Haskell. How
can any one prove themselves to be themselves, Misther Curran? Are the
courts goin' crazy?"

The detective explained what evidence a court would accept as proof of
personality.

"Well, Arthur can give that aisy enough," said she.

"But he won't touch the thing at all, Mrs. Haskell. He was absent ten
years, and maybe he doesn't want that period ripped up in a court. It
might appear that he had a wife, you know, or some other disagreeable
thing might leak out. When the lawyers get one on the witness stand,
they make hares of him."

"Sure enough," said Judy thoughtfully. Had she not suggested this very
suspicion to Anne? The young are wild, and even Arthur could have
slipped from grace in that interval of his life. Curran hoped that
Arthur could prove his identity without exposing the secrets of the
past.

"For example," said he smoothly, with an eye for Judy's expression,
"could you go to court to-morrow and swear that Arthur is the same lad
that ran away from his mother fifteen years ago?"

"I cud swear as manny oaths on that point as there are hairs in yer
head," said Judy.

"And what would you say, Mrs. Haskell, if the judge said to you: Now,
madam, it's very easy for you to say you know the young man to be the
same person as the runaway boy; but how do you know it? what makes you
think you know it?"

"I'd say he was purty sassy, indade. Of coorse I'd say that to meself,
for ye can't talk to a judge as aisy an' free as to a lawyer. Well, I'd
say manny pleasant things. Arthur was gone tin years, but I knew him an'
he knew me the minute we set eyes on aich other. Then, agin, I knew him
out of his father. He doesn't favor the mother at all, for she's light
an' he's dark. There's a dale o' the Dillon in him. Then, agin, how
manny things he tould me of the times we had together, an' he even asked
me if Teresa Flynn, his sweetheart afore he wint off, was livin' still.
Oh, as thrue as ye're sittin' there! Poor thing, she was married. An' he
remembered how fond he was o' rice puddin' ice cold. An' he knew Louis
Everard the minute he shtud forninst him in the door. But what's the use
o' talkin'? I cud tell ye for hours all the things he said an' did to
show he was Arthur Dillon."

"Has he any marks on his body that would help to identify him, if he
undertook to get t