"Vaulting?" he cried sharply. "You said you jumped it." I suppose I had done. "Well," I said, "I vaulted over. I saw him vault, and I followed suit." Worthing looked at me as though astounded, and then said, "Good God, Tommy, and you've only just told me that! Come along," he cried, and raced me off to the spot for a further investigation. And there on the stump where I had rested my hand were two great rusty nails sticking out wickedly from the rotten timber. Indeed it looked as though the gash they had made in the wood had first set it splitting. Worthing gazed at them, then turned to me and looked at my hand. "Yes," he said, "that's it. And yet in your confounded stupidity you wouldn't have said anything about it!" To tell the truth I was still rather in a maze at the importance of the find. "Can't you see?" cried Worthing, reading my dullness in my vacant stare. "Don't you realize that he's probably marked in the same way?" "Ah, of course," I said. "He put his hand there too." "How wise of you to think of that!" was all he answered. But I believe I would have thought of it long since had it not been for the cloud which hadn't yet quite lifted from my spirit. But Worthing hadn't done with me. For days we strolled the country round, or sat out on the cliffs, or lay in bed with the candle burning to the socket, while I told him everything I could remember of my past life; a hundred times as much as I have written in this book, for I couldn't distinguish then between the relevant and the irrelevant, and indeed he didn't wish me to distinguish. If I seemed to be keeping back some trifling detail he would wrest it relentlessly out of me, declaring that he must know everything I could possibly remember, to the very clothes I had ever worn and the very meals I had ever eaten. At times he listened with his eyes half closed, as though waiting for some hint which would set him on a clue, or throw light on other parts of the story which seemed shadowy and inexplicable. And at times he would start up alertly and tell me to repeat something again, spurring on my memory with hints and suggestions.