Evelyn, for her part, overcome with an embarrassment mingled with another feeling that was wholly new to her, ran in the opposite direction down the trail, and over a patch of frozen snow to a secluded spot sheltered by a thicket of scrub firs, where, even as she broke from her lover's embrace, she had seen her former traveling acquaintance and present correspondent, Horatio Travers, awaiting her.
Scarlett went up immediately to the Customs building, there to transact the formalities incident to the extradition of Bully Nick. These concluded, and the official courtesies having been duly proffered and accepted, he at last felt free to continue his interrupted wooing. Coming out into the open, he was going to seek Evelyn in a merry group where the orphans were being taught the art of keeping erect on snow-shoes, when he was accosted by Maclane.
"Oh, Sergeant! I am called upon to marry a couple under circumstances of a peculiar nature, involving exceptional haste. There is no Gold Commissioner, I find, nor Justice of the Peace, in the district, nor within a day's journey, from whom to obtain a license; but I have consented to accept a copy of the Dominion Marriage Act, or rather a specified clause thereof, signed by yourself as Mounted Policeman in charge. Will that arrangement satisfy you, judicially speaking?"
"Surely," replied Scarlett, "any marriage that you can, with conscience, solemnize I can sanction without a conscience, sir."
"I never was called upon to perform a duty that I liked so ill," the minister acknowledged, as he followed the soldier to the Customs building. "In fact, I have exceeded my prerogative, through my personal interest in one of the contracting parties, in counseling, beseeching, delay. Yet what can I do? The young lady is of age; she is determined on the step; moreover, she has her father's consent, while I have not one single argument to urge against it, merely a feeling of dislike, distrust, for the gentleman of her choice."
"In primitive regions I have found it unwise to oppose too many obstacles to marriages," remarked the soldier, who, by this time, was busily copying the required clause from a sheepskin-covered tome, "since there is always a popular tendency to forego the ceremony, if it involves the slightest trouble. Oh, I'm used to this! Also, I have had not a few applications for divorces."
"Eh?" exclaimed the minister. "Surely you do not grant them, my young friend?"
"I have no power to," Scarlett told him. "The best I can do under such circumstances is to give the applicants a bill of Dissolution of Partnership, to minimize the squabbling over the division of the outfit. These present protégés of yours may be my next candidates. There." He handed Maclane the paper. "Now it is ready for the signatures—yours and mine. But, first, these blanks must be filled in with the names of bride and groom."
"They shall write them for themselves," replied the minister, who was visibly agitated. "Not by a pen stroke will I further them beyond what is forced upon me." Going to the door he beckoned two persons waiting without, and to Scarlett's amazement summoned by name, "Horatio Travers! Evelyn Durant!"