midnight
He had lost heart ; and the miles which would have been nothing to him , had he walked in the companionship of hopeful and happy thoughts , stretched out wearily as he brooded over sad memories and still sadder anticipations , -- the downfall of the Missions , the loss of their vast estates , and the growing power of the ungodly in the land . The final decision of the United States Government in regard to the Mission-lands had been a terrible blow to him . He had devoutly believed that ultimate restoration of these great estates to the Church was inevitable . In the long vigils which he always kept when at home at the Franciscan Monastery in Santa Barbara , kneeling on the stone pavement in the church , and praying ceaselessly from midnight till dawn , he had often had visions vouchsafed him of a new dispensation , in which the Mission establishments should be reinstated in all their old splendor and prosperity , and their Indian converts again numbered by tens of thousands . Long after every one knew that this was impossible , he would narrate these visions with the faith of an old Bible seer , and declare that they must come true , and that it was a sin to despond . But as year after year he journeyed up and down the country , seeing , at Mission after Mission , the buildings crumbling into ruin , the lands all taken , sold , resold , and settled by greedy speculators ; the Indian converts disappearing , driven back to their original wildernesses , the last traces of the noble work of his order being rapidly swept away , his courage faltered , his faith died out . Changes in the manners and customs of his order itself , also , were giving him deep pain .