"I'm not faking," Ben told them quietly. "I honestly don't remember you--I feel that I ought to, but I don't. I honestly didn't remember my name was Darby until a minute ago--then just as soon as you spoke it, I knew the truth. Nothing can surprise me, any more. I suppose you're kin of mine--?" Melville gazed at him in incredulous astonishment, then turned to Sprigley. "May I talk to you about this case?" he asked quietly. "If not to you, who can I talk to? There are a few points that might help to clear up--" Ordering his men to their work, Melville and Sprigley stood apart, and for nearly an hour engaged in the most earnest conversation. The afternoon was shadow-flaked and paling when they had finished, and before Sprigley led his men back within the gray walls he had arranged for Melville to come to the prison after the dinner hour and confer with Mitchell, the warden. Many and important were the developments arising from this latter conference. One of the least of them was that Melville's northward journey was postponed for some days, and that within a week this same white-haired, lean old man, dressed in the garb of the cinder trail, was pleading his case to no less a personage than the governor of the State of Washington in whom authority for dealing with Ben's case was absolutely vested. It came about, from the same cause, that a noted alienist, Forest, of Seattle, visited Ben Darby in his cell; and finally that the prisoner himself, under the strict guard of Sprigley, was taken to the capital at Olympia. 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."