In all this she never by a sign betrayed that one of us was her son and the other a stranger.

Even to the last, on the day she died, the words she spoke to me, I was convinced, she would equally have spoken to Tim, had he, not I, been there to hear them.
Could it be possible that she did not herself know?
Any mother who reads this will, I think, scoff at the notion; and yet I think it was so.

Weak and ill as she was when it all happened, bewildered and dazed by the murder of her master and the terrible suspicion thrown on her husband, lying for weeks after in a half swoon, and believing herself at the gate of death, I think, in spite of all the mothers in Ireland, that when at last she came back to life, and looked on the two little fellows nestled in the bed at her side, she knew not the one from the other.
My father, I was sure, if he even knew that one of us was not his own boy, neither knew nor concerned himself which was which, so long as he kept his honour in good-humour.
But as regarded Biddy McQuilkin, it was different.

She was not ill or blind or in mortal fear when it all happened.

If any one could tell, it was she.