“I will tell you the truth,” and Tom began at the beginning and told the story from the time he had had a part in it.
“You see, if I had not saved her, the child would have been drowned.”
“And Jim Farren was the boy who started to do this trick. Let me see him again, and I’ll pull his claws for him.”
“You won’t be bothered with him, I have a notion,” said Tom, “for he wouldn’t dare to stay about here.”
Biddy was undressing the wet child.
“And I was but telling her dying mother this day that I would care for her and see that her cousin did not harm her.”
“Yes, I have an idea,” said Tom, as he was shivering with the cold, “that it was this same cousin who found out about the child and wanted her out of the way.”
“That’s it, and now, lad,” and here Biddy looked at the sailor with pity in her eyes, “what are you going to do, go back to the Island?”
“Not if I can help it. I was put in on a false charge, for a crime I never committed. Now then, what can you do for me?”
“I can fix you up so that you won’t be known by your own mother if you had one a-living, but now you get into this old dress of mine and climb to the loft and sleep as long as you want to, and I will see to the child. I’ll throw these old clothes of yours into the river and let the stripes sink in the presence of the stars.”