ringly of water from a
stinking goatskin. This goatskin I kept hanging in the sun that the
stench of the skin might increase and that there might be no refreshment
of coolness in the water. Food there was, lying in the dirt on my cave-
floor--a few roots and a chunk of mouldy barley-cake; and hungry I was,
although I did not eat.

All I did that blessed, livelong day was to sweat and swelter in the sun,
mortify my lean flesh upon the rock, gaze out of the desolation,
resurrect old memories, dream dreams, and mutter my convictions aloud.

And when the sun set, in the swift twilight I took a last look at the
world so soon to pass. About the feet of the colossi I could make out
the creeping forms of beasts that laired in the once proud works of men.
And to the snarls of the beasts I crawled into my hole, and, muttering
and dozing, visioning fevered fancies and praying that the last day come
quickly, I ebbed down into the darkness of sleep.

* * * * *

Consciousness came back to me in solitary, with the quartet of torturers
about me.

"Blasphemous and heretical Warden of San Quentin whose feet have fast
hold of hell," I gibed, after I had drunk deep of the water they held to
my lips. "Let the jailers and the trusties triumph. Their time is
short, and for them there is no time after time."

"He's out of his head," Warden Atherton affirmed.

"He's putting it over on you," was Doctor Jackson's surer judgment.

"But he refuses food," Captain Jamie protested.

"Huh, he could fast forty days and not hurt himself," the doctor
answered.

"And I have," I said, "and forty nights as well. Do me the favour to
tighten the jacket and then get out of here."

The head trusty tried to insert his forefinger inside the lacing.

"You couldn't get a quarter of an inch of slack with block and tackle,"
he assured them.

"Have you any complaint to make, Standing?" the Warden asked.

"Yes," was my reply. "On two counts."

"What are they?"

"First," I said, "the jacket is abominably loose. Hutchins is an ass. He
could get a foot of slack if he wanted."

"What is the other count?" Warden Atherton asked.

"That you are conceived of the devil, Warden."

Captain Jamie and Doctor Jackson tittered, and the Warden, with a snort,
led the way out of my cell.

* * * * *

Left alone, I strove to go into the dark and gain back to the wagon
circle at Nephi. I was interested to know the outcome of that doomed
drifting of our