The brief inquisition that followed, changing the entire current of Ben Darby’s life, occurred in the private office of McNamara, the Governor.  McNamara himself stood up to greet them when they entered, the guard and the convict.  Ezra Melville and Forest, the alienist from Seattle, were already in session.  The latter conducted the examination.

He tried his subject first on some of the most simple tests for sanity.  It became evident at once, however, that except for his amnesia Ben’s mind was perfectly sound:  he passed all general intelligence tests with a high score, he conversed easily, he talked frankly of his symptoms.  He had perfect understanding of the general sweep of events in the past twenty years:  his amnesia seemed confined to his own activities and the activities of those intimately connected with him.  Where he had been, what he had done, all the events of his life up to the night of his arrest remained, for all his effort to remember them, absolutely in darkness.

“You don’t remember this man?” Forest asked him quietly, indicating Ezra Melville.

Again Ben’s eyes studied the droll, gray face.  “With the vaguest kind of memory.  I know I’ve seen him before—­often.  I can’t tell anything else.”

“He’s a good friend of your family.  He knew your folks.  I should say he was a very good friend, to take the trouble and time he has, in your behalf.”

Ben nodded.  He did not have to be told that fact.  The explanation, however, was beyond him.

Forest leaned forward.  “You remember the Saskatchewan River?”

Ben straightened, but the dim images in his mind were not clear enough for him to answer in the affirmative.  “I’m afraid not.”

Melville leaned forward in his chair.  “Ask him if he remembers winning the canoe race at Lodge Pole—­or the time he shot the Athabaska Rapids.”

Ben turned brightly to him, but slowly shook his head.  “I can’t remember ever hearing of them before.”

“I think you would, in time,” Forest remarked.  “They must have been interesting experiences.  Now what do these mean to you?—­Thunder Lake—­Abner Darby—­Edith Darby—­MacLean’s College——­”

Ben relaxed, focusing his attention on the names.  For the instant the scene about him, the anxious, interested faces, faded from his consciousness.  Thunder Lake!  Somewhere, some time, Thunder Lake had had the most intimate associations with his life.  The name stirred him and moved him; dim voices whispered in his ears about it, but he couldn’t quite catch what they said.  He groped and reached in vain.

There was no doubt but that an under-consciousness had full knowledge of the name and all that it meant.  But it simply could not reach that knowledge up into his conscious mind.

Abner Darby!  It was curious what a flood of tenderness swept through him as, whispering, he repeated the name.  Some one old and white-haired had been named Abner Darby:  some one whom he had once worshipped with the fervor of boyhood, but who had leaned on his own, strong shoulders in latter years.  Since his own name was Darby, Abner Darby was, in all probability, his father; but his reasoning intelligence, rather than his memory, told him so.