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.

The name of Edith Darby conjured up in his mind a childhood playmate,--a
girl with towzled yellow curls and chu