why you can never have a great
musician or a great poet in your land of blizzards, Cousin Dooncan.
You are all kept too busy laying up nuts for the winter. You can't
afford to turn gipsy and go off star-gazing."

"You can if you join the I. W. W.," I retorted. But the allusion was
lost on her.

"I can't imagine a Shelley or a Theocritus up here on your prairie,"
she went on, "or a Marcus Aurelius in the real-estate business in
Winnipeg."

Dinky-Dunk was able to smile at this, though I wasn't.

"But we have the glory of doing things," I contended, "and somebody, I
believe, has summed up your Marcus Aurelius by saying he left behind
him a couple of beautiful books, an execrable son, and a decaying
nation. And we don't intend to decay! We don't live for the moment,
it's true. But we live for To-morrow. We write epics in railway lines,
and instead of working out sonnets we build new cities, and instead of
sitting down under a palm-tree and twiddling our thumbs we turn a
wilderness into a new nation, and grow grain and give bread to the
hungry world where the gipsies don't seem quite able to make both ends
meet!"

I had my say out, and Lady Alicia sat looking at me with a sort of
mild and impersonal surprise. But she declined to argue about it all.
And it was just as well she didn't, I suppose, for I had my Irish up
and didn't intend to sit back and see my country maligned.

But on the way home to the Harris Ranch last night, with Dinky-Dunk
silent and thoughtful, and a cold star or two in the high-arching
heavens over us, I found that my little fire of enthusiasm had burnt
itself out and those crazy lines of John Davidson kept returning to my
mind:

"After the end of all things,
After the years are spent,
After the loom is broken,
After the robe is rent,
Will there be hearts a-beating,
Will friend converse with friend,
Will men and women be lovers,
After the end?"

I felt very much alone in the world, and about as cheerful as a
moonstruck coyote, after those lines had rattled in my empty brain like
a skeleton in the wind. It wasn't until I saw the light in our wickiup
window and heard Bobs' bay of welcome through the crystal-clear
twilight that the leaden weight of desolation slipped off the ledge of
my heart. But as I heard that deep-noted bark of gladness, that
frien