When he had walked an hour, he felt he must stop, at least to rest.  He looked back to see how far he had come.  He was disappointed by the nearness of the hills; they seemed but a stone’s throw away.  If delirium came now he would probably wander back to the water.  He lay down, determining to gather strength for many more miles.  The sand was hot under him, and the heat of a furnace was above, but he lay with his head on his arm and his hat pulled over his face.  Soon he was half-asleep, so that dreams would alternate with flashes of consciousness; or sometimes they merged, so that he would dream he had wandered into a desert, or that the stifling heat of a desert came to him amid the snows of Echo Canon.  He awakened finally with a cry, brushing from before his eyes a mass of yellow hair that a dark hand shook in his face.

He sat up, looked about a moment, and was on his feet again to the south, walking in the full glare of the sun, with his shadow now straight behind him.  He went unsteadily at first, but soon felt new vigour from his rest.

He walked another hour, then turned, and was again disappointed—­it was such a little distance; yet he knew now he must be too far out to find his way back when the madness came.  So it was with a little sigh of contentment that he lay down again to rest or to take what might come.

Again he lay with his head on his arm in the scorching sands, with his hat above his face, and again his dreams alternated with consciousness of the desolation about him—­alternated and mingled so that he no longer knew when he did not sleep.  And again he was tortured to wakefulness, to thirst, and to heat, by the yellow hair brandished before him.

He sat up until he was quite awake, and then sank back upon the sand again, relieved to find that he felt too weak to walk further.  His mind had become suddenly cleared so that he seemed to see only realities, and those in their just proportions.  He knew he had passed sentence of death upon himself, knew he had been led to sin by his own arrogance of soul.  It came to him in all its bare, hard simplicity, stripped of the illusions and conceits in which his pride had draped it, thrusting sharp blades of self-condemnation through his heart.  In that moment he doubted all things.  He knew he had sinned past his own forgiveness, even if pardon had come from on high; knew that no agony of spear and thorns upon the cross could avail to take him from the hell to which his own conscience had sent him.

He was quite broken.  Not since the long-gone night on the river-flat across from Nauvoo had tears wet his eyes.  But they fell now, and from sheer, helpless grief he wept.  And then for the first time in two days he prayed—­this time the prayer of the publican:—­

“God be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Over and over he said the words, chokingly, watering the hot sands with his tears.  When the paroxysm had passed, it left him, weak and prone, still faintly crying his prayer into the sand, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”