Moira clasped her hands.
"Wicklow!" she cried. "'Twas in Wicklow I was born, and my mother before me."
"Ah, then, 'tis glad I will be I met ye this side o' the world," he answered, clapping his hand to his cutlass-hilt very hardily. "For if we'd come on each other in Wicklow I'd be no more nor a gossoon of a bog-trotter and ye one o' the grand gentry-folk."
Moira's laugh had the note of fairy chimes I had not heard since her father fell on the James' deck.
"'Tis you are the lad with the silver tongue," she said. "But if ye come from Wicklow, Darby, it will be almost as if we were of the same family."
She suddenly sobered.
"And I, that might be elder cousin or maybe sister to you, must be asking why ye are a pirate? Were ye not honest-born?"
Darby's embarrassment was almost as painful as Ben Gunn's.
"Why, ye see— There was in me always the wish for the sea— I was no more nor a bound-boy— And Long John, he says——"
"Darby," she interrupted sternly, "how long will it be since ye confessed?"