Mary smilingly laid her hand on Dinny’s, and gazed in the merry, frank face before her.
“I’ll trust you,” she said.
“And ye sha’n’t repent it, me lad, for you’ve done no harm, and were niver a prishner. And now, as we are talking, I’d like to know what yer brother and number noinety-sivin did to be sint out of the counthry. It wasn’t murther, or they’d have hung ’em. Was it—helping yerselves?”
“My brother and his old friend Bart Wrigley were transported to the plantations for beating and half-killing, they said, the scoundrel who had insulted and ill-used his sister!” cried Mary, with flashing eyes and flaming cheeks, as she stood up proudly in the boat, and looked from one to the other.
“Wid a shtick?” said Dinny, rubbing his cheek as he peered eagerly into Mary’s face.
“Yes, with sticks.”
“And was that all?”
“Yes.”
“They transported thim two boys to this baste of a place, and put chains on their legs, for giving a spalpeen like that a big bating wid a shtick?”
“Yes,” said Mary, smiling in the eager face before her; “that was the reason.”