d go to Casa Grande and look things over.

_Thursday the Sixteenth_

I didn't go over to Casa Grande, after all. For this morning the news
came to me that Duncan had been back since day before yesterday. And
he is undoubtedly doing anything that needs to be done.

But the lady lied, after all. That fact now is only too apparent. And
her equerry has been hurried back to look after her harried estate.
The live stock, I hear, went without water for three whole days, and
the poultry would all have been in kingdom-come if Sing Lo, in
choosing a few choice birds for his private consumption, hadn't
happened to leave the run-door unlatched....

I was foolish enough to expect, of course, that Duncan might nurse
some slight curiosity as to his family and its welfare. This will be
his third day back, and he has neither put in an appearance nor sent a
word. He's busy, of course, with that tangle to unravel--but where
there's a will there's usually a way. And hope dies hard. Yet day by
day I find less bitterness in my heart. Those earlier hot tides of
resentment have been succeeded, not by tranquillity or even
indifference, but by a colder and more judicial attitude toward things
in general. I've got a home and a family to fight for--not to mention
a baby with prickly-heat--and they must not be forgotten. I have the
consolation, too, of knowing that the fight doesn't promise to be a
losing one. I've banked on wheat, and old Mother Earth is not going to
betray me. My grain has ripened miraculously during these last few
weeks of hot dry weather. It's _too_ hot, in fact, for my harvest
threatens to come on with a rush. But we'll scramble through it, in
some way.

_Sunday the Nineteenth_

It's only three days since I wrote those last lines. But it seems a
long time back to last Thursday. So many, many things have happened
since then.

Friday morning broke very hot, and without a breath of wind. By noon
it was stifling. By mid-afternoon I felt strangely tired, and even
more strangely depressed. I even attempted to shake myself together,
arguing that my condition was purely mental, for I had remembered that
it was unmistakably Friday, a day of ill-omen to the superstitious.

I was surprised, between four and five, to see Whinstane Sandy come in
from his work and busy himself about the stables. When I asked him the
reason for this premature withdrawal he pointed toward