heart anew, and she strained him to her breast again
and again, and then went back, drowned in tears, to her bed.

As she lay thinking and mourning, the suggestion began to creep into her
mind that there was an undefinable something about this boy that was
lacking in Tom Canty, mad or sane. She could not describe it, she could
not tell just what it was, and yet her sharp mother-instinct seemed to
detect it and perceive it. What if the boy were really not her son,
after all? Oh, absurd! She almost smiled at the idea, spite of her
griefs and troubles. No matter, she found that it was an idea that would
not 'down,' but persisted in haunting her. It pursued her, it harassed
her, it clung to her, and refused to be put away or ignored. At last she
perceived that there was not going to be any peace for her until she
should devise a test that should prove, clearly and without question,
whether this lad was her son or not, and so banish these wearing and
worrying doubts. Ah, yes, this was plainly the right way out of the
difficulty; therefore she set her wits to work at once to contrive that
test. But it was an easier thing to propose than to accomplish. She
turned over in her mind one promising test after another, but was obliged
to relinquish them all--none of them were absolutely sure, absolutely
perfect; and an imperfect one could not satisfy her. Evidently she was
racking her head in vain--it seemed manifest that she must give the
matter up. While this depressing thought was passing through her mind,
her ear caught the regular breathing of the boy, and she knew he had
fallen asleep. And while she listened, the measured breathing was broken
by a soft, startled cry, such as one utters in a troubled dream. This
chance occurrence furnished her instantly with a plan worth all her
laboured tests combined. She at once set herself feverishly, but
noiselessly, to work to relight her candle, muttering to herself, "Had I
but seen him THEN, I should have known! Since that day, when he was
little, that the powder burst in his face, he hath never been startled of
a sudden out of his dreams or out of his thinkings, but he hath cast his
hand before his eyes, even as he did that day; and not as others would do
it, with the palm inward, but always with the palm turned outward--I have
seen it a hundred times, and it hath never varied nor ever failed. Yes,
I shall soon know, now!"

By this time she had crept to the slumbering