“He couldn’t remember where or when he was born, or who were his folks, or where he had come from, or how he had spent his life.  He knew that ‘Ben,’ his first name, sounded right to him, but ‘Kinney’ didn’t—­the reason likely being that Kinney was an alias adopted during his life as a criminal.  I suppose you’ve noticed that queer, bewildered look he has when any one calls him Kinney.  What his real name is he doesn’t know.  He can’t even remember that.  And the explanation is—­complete loss of memory.

“You mark my words, Howard—­that man hasn’t been a criminal always.  Something got wrong with his head, and he turned crook—­you might say that the criminal side that all of us has simply took possession of him.  That night in the alley he came to himself—­only his mind was left a blank not only in regard to his life as a criminal, but all that had gone before.”

“Then why don’t you do something about it—­besides talk?  Mitchell says you’re gettin’ so you talk of nothin’ else.”

“It’s not for me to do anything about it.  The man was a criminal.  The State can’t go any further than that.  I suppose if every man was set free who wasn’t, in the last analysis, responsible for his crimes, we wouldn’t have anybody left in the penitentiary.  He’s in for five years—­considering what he’ll pick up here, it might as well be for life.  Amnesia—­that’s what the doctors call it—­amnesia following some sort of a mental trouble.  In the end you’ll see that I’m right.”

Sprigley was right.  To Ben Kinney life was like a single pale light in a long, dark street.  Complete loss of memory prevented him from looking backward.  Complete loss of hope kept him from looking ahead.

It had been this way for months now—­ever since the night the policeman had found him, the “jimmy” dropped from his hands, in the alley.  Heaven knows what he had done, what madness had been upon him, before that time.  But as Sprigley had said, that night had marked a change.  It was true that so far as facts went he was no better off:  when he had come to himself he had found his mind a blank regarding not only his career of crime, but all the years that had gone before.  Even his own name eluded him.  That of Kinney had an alien sound in his ears.

The past had simply ceased to exist for him; and because it is some way the key to the future, the latter seemed likewise blank,—­a toneless gray that did not in the least waken his interest.  Indeed the only light that flung into the unfathomable darkness of his forgetfulness was that which played in his dreams at night.  Sometimes these were inordinately vivid, quite in contrast to the routine of prison life.

He felt if he could only recall these dreams clearly they would interpret for him the mystery of his own life.  He wakened, again and again, with the consciousness of having dreamed the most stirring, amazing dreams, but what they were he couldn’t tell.  He could only remember fragments, such as a picture of rushing waters recurring again and again—­and sometimes an amazing horizon, a dark line curiously notched against a pale green background.