"There's really nothing much to begin at," he tried to explain. "These things don't seem to begin in a minute, or an hour, or a day."
"Of course not," I assented as I waited for him to go on.
"The thing I noticed at the time, about the only thing I even thought of, was that my memory seemed to have a blind spot—a blind spot the same as an eye has."
"Ill?" I asked. "Or overworking?"
"I guess I'd been pounding away pretty hard. I know I had. You see, I wanted to make good in that office. So I must have been biting off more than I could chew."
"What office?" I asked as he came to a stop. He looked up at me with a stare of dazed perplexity.
"Didn't I tell you that?" he asked, massaging his frontal bone with the ends of his unsteady fingers. "Why, I mean John Lockwood's office."
"John Lockwood?" I repeated, with a sudden tightening of the nerves. "Do you mean the railway-investment man, the man who made so many millions up along the northwest coast?"
The youth in the chair nodded. And I made an effort to control my feelings, for John Lockwood, I knew only too well, was the father of Mary Lockwood. He, like myself, had exploited the Frozen North, but had exploited it in a manner very different from mine.
"Go on," I said, after quite a long pause.