"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 the gold mine that belongs to him?"
"Artie had only wan mark on him as a boy ... he was the most spotless child I ever saw ... an' that was a mole on his right shoulder. He tuk it wid him to California, an' he brought it back, for I saw it meself in the same spot while he was sick, an' I called his attintion to it, an' he was much surprised, for he had never thought of it wanst."
"It's my opinion," said Curran solemnly, "that he can prove his identity without exposing his life in the west. I hope to persuade him to it. Maybe the photographs of himself and his father would help. Have you any copies of them?"