Page:The Clansman (1905).djvu/341

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it twice. Psychologists hold that nothing is lost from the memory of man. Impressions remain in the brain like words written on paper in invisible ink. So I believe of images in the eye if we can trace them early enough. If no impression were made subsequently on the mother's eye by the light of day, I believe the fire-etched record of this crime can yet be traced."

Ben watched him with breathless interest.

He first examined Marion's eyes. But in the cold azure blue of their pure depths he could find nothing.

"It's as I feared with the child," he said. "I can see nothing. It is on the mother I rely. In the splendour of life, at thirty-seven she was the full-blown perfection of womanhood with every vital force at its highest tension——"

He looked long and patiently into the dead mother's eye, rose and wiped the perspiration from his face.

"What is it, sir?" asked Ben.

Without reply, as if in a trance, he returned to the microscope and again rose with the little quick nervous cough he gave only in the greatest excitement, and whispered:

"Look now and tell me what you see."

Ben looked and said:

"I can see nothing."

"Your powers of vision are not trained as mine," replied the doctor, resuming his place at the instrument.

"What do you see?" asked the younger man, bending nervously.

"The bestial figure of a negro—his huge black hand