tle doubt but that his subconsciousness had full cognizance
of the contents of that box. He was trembling slightly, too--in
excitement and expectation--and Ezra Melville, suddenly standing erect,
was trembling too. The moment was charged with the uttermost suspense.

Evidently this was the climax in the examination. Even McNamara, the
Governor, was breathless with interest in his chair; Forest had the rapt
look of a scientist in some engrossing experiment. He opened the box,
taking therefrom a roll of white cotton. This he slowly unrolled,
revealing two small, ribboned ornaments of gold or bronze.

Ben's starting eyes fastened on them. No doubt he recognized them. A
look of veritable anguish swept his brown face, and all at once small
drops of moisture appeared on his brow and through the short hairs at
his temples. The dark scar at his temple was suddenly brightly red from
the pounding blood beneath.

"The Victoria Cross, of course," he said slowly, brokenly. "I won it,
didn't I--the day--that day at Ypres--the day my men were trapped--"

His words faltered then. The wheels of _his_ memory, starting into
motion, were stilled once more. Again the great darkness dropped over
him; there were only the medals left in their roll of cotton, and the
broken fragments of a story--of some wild, stirring event of the war
just gone--remaining in his mind. Yet to Forest the experiment was an
unqualified success.

"There's no doubt of it!" he exclaimed. He turned to McNamara, the
Governor. "His brain is just as sound as yours or mine. With the right
environment, the right treatment, he'd be on the straight road to
recovery. In a general way of speaking he has recovered now, largely,
from the purely temporary trouble that he had before."

McNamara focused an intent gaze first on Ben, then on the alienist. "It
is, then--as you guessed."

"Absolutely. The night of his arrest marked the end of his trouble; you
might say that his brain simply snapped back into health and began to
function normally again, after a period of temporary mania from
shell-shock. It is true that his memory was left blank, but there
doesn't seem to be any organic reason for it to be blank--other than
lack of incentive to remember. Catch me up, if you don't follow me. In
other words, he has been slowly convalescing since that night: under the
proper stimuli I have no doubt that everything would come back to him."

"And our friend here--Melville--offers to s