Just before sunset he came to a broad opening between the clustering mesas, through which he caught another glimpse of them, now tinged with a rosy flush, and seeming more beautiful than before, but in a few minutes the light faded and they were gone. Then, trembling with weakness, the lad sat down and watched until a star rose where he had last seen them, when, with it as a guide, he resumed his weary way. He often stumbled, and sometimes he fell, but still he pushed on, until at length his glittering beacon was obscured by black clouds. Then he sank to the ground, without heart to rise again. For a long time he lay asleep or in a stupor, from which he might never have awakened but for a shower of rain, that, falling on his upturned face, roused him to consciousness. Eagerly sucking the precious fluid from his saturated garments, and gaining fresh strength with every life-giving drop, he waited for the dawn, and with the first hazy glimpse of the far-away blue peaks he again staggered toward them. The sun rose and scorched him with its pitiless heat, until he seemed to be treading coals of fire. Mirage after mirage danced before his bewildered vision, with pictures of all things shady and cool and refreshing, until his eye-sight failed him, and he groped his way amid a darkness shot by glowing sparks. The last thing of which he was conscious was a great white wall that seemed to rise to the sky before him, and stretch to infinity on either side. It seemed to shut him off completely from the blue peaks he had striven so bravely to gain, and apparently presented an effectual barrier to any further progress. In that last moment his head was splitting, his brain was on fire, his mouth and throat were like molten brass, his whole body was racked with pain, and his feet were like leaden weights. Then all sense of suffering was lost in a delicious laughter, and he seemed to be floating through infinite space that was filled with the music of rippling waters. CHAPTER IV. IN THE SHADOW OF THE GREAT WHITE MESA. For many hours Todd Chalmers slept heavily and dreamlessly, like one who will never again awaken. He had wandered blindly with reeling steps for some time after losing a consciousness of his surroundings, and had thus unwittingly penetrated a deep cleft of the great white wall that was the last thing upon which his despairing gaze had rested. At the inner end of this recess he stumbled and fell over a fragment of rock. There he lay through the long night in what was, to all appearance, his last sleep. That it was not was owing wholly to his youth and the wonderful vitality of a splendid constitution. Not more than one person in a thousand would have lived to see another daylight under the circumstances; but our lad was that one, and at length he began to show signs of returning life. He moaned, shivered, and finally opened his eyes. For many minutes he lay motionless, striving to remember what had happened and where he was.