ever when first settled, though much of that
country now has a comfortable array of bluffs. And forestry, of
course, is giving nature a friendly push along, in the matter. In the
meantime, we have to accommodate ourselves to the conditions that
prevail, just as the birds of the air must do. Here the haughty crow
of the east is compelled to nest in the low willows of the coulee and
raise its young within hand-reach of mother earth. Like our women, it
can enjoy very little privacy of family life. The only thing that
saves us and the crows, I suppose, is that the men-folks of this
country are too preoccupied with their own ends to go around
bird-nesting. They are too busy to break up homes, either in
willow-tops or women's hearts.... I ought to be satisfied. But I've
been dogged, this last day or two, by a longing to be scudding in a
single-sticker off Orienta Point again or to motor-cruise once more
along the Sound in a smother of spray.

_Thursday the Thirteenth_

Dinky-Dunk has been called to Calgary on business. It sounds simple
enough, in these Unpretentious Annals of an Unloved Worm, but I can't
help feeling that it marks a trivially significant divide in the trend
of things. It depresses me more than I can explain. My depression, I
imagine, comes mostly from the manner in which Duncan went. He was
matter-of-fact enough about it all, but I can't get rid of the
impression that he went with a feeling very much like relief. His
manner, at any rate, was not one to invite cross-examination, and he
insisted, to the end, on regarding his departure as an every-day
incident in the life of a preoccupied rancher. So I caught my cue from
him, and was as quiet about it all as he could have wished. But under
the crust was the volcano....

The trouble with the tragedies of real life is that they are never
clear-cut. It takes art to weave a selvage about them or fit them into
a frame. But in reality they're as ragged and nebulous as
wind-clouds. The days drag on into weeks, and the weeks into months,
and life on the surface seems to be running on, the same as before.
There's the same superficial play of all the superficial old forces,
but in the depths are dangers and uglinesses and sullen bombs of
emotional TNT we daren't even touch!

Heigho! I nearly forgot my _sursum-corda_ role. And didn't old Doctor
Johnson say that peevishness was the vice of narrow minds? So here's
where we tighten up the belt a bit. But we human