THE PROVISIONAL BOUNDARY.

"Miss Durant! This is a delightfull surprise!" Dismounting from her sled drawn by eight frisky little huskies, Miss Durant encountered not the Mr. Horatio Travers who had written, begging for a private interview near Gumboot Annie's, on a confidential mission from her father, but the handsome and genial presence of Sergeant Scarlett.

"The surprise at least is not all on one side," laughed Evelyn, giving him her hand. "What are you doing so far from headquarters?"

"My jurisdiction extends to the boundary line. Just now it is my painful duty to meet a United States Representative in yonder Customs building, and formally make over to him the person of Bully Nick."

"Ah, the poor Bully!" Evelyn sighed. "He has this incorrigible habit of shooting the wrong people. But I'm in hopes of getting him off. I shall spare no expense. I've wired to Sitka, in my father's name, for the ablest counsel to defend him."

"And, confidence for confidence," said Scarlett, "what are you doing here?"

"Oh, just keeping an appointment—I mean, mushing it with Sarah and the girls for a day's outing," Evelyn hurriedly corrected herself, recalling that Travers' note enjoined the strictest secrecy. "And, pardon me, I must go to their rescue now." To conceal a slight embarrassment caused by her prevarication, she sped toward her party on whom the Customs' officials of two nations had pounced down, assuming that they intended to cross the boundary and must be treated like malefactors accordingly.

Picking up the muff that Evelyn in her haste had dropped, Scarlett buried his face in the soft fur. "I'm another," he confided to it.

"'Tis himself!" Barney hurried toward him from the tent, but as Scarlett, in his abstraction, did not notice him, he inquired, with solicitude: "Are ye here, sorr?"

"Faith, no, man. I'm wandering."

"Is ut impty ye do be feeling yourself inside, sorr?"

"Empty is it, with the appetite that's there! Bring me rations out here. Bring a double share." His eye strayed toward Evelyn.

"H'm! 'Tis a case of wan plate and two spoons, or I'm a blind man!" commented Barney, hastening to obey.

"Miss," cried Sarah, in shocked accents, as Evelyn drew near, "them orphans are flirting outrageously with the Customs gentlemen of both nations, and feeding them with fudge."

"Dear, dear," mocked Evelyn, "we must put a stop to that at all costs, Sarah. Take the girls into the tent and give them their dinner—or there will be international complications."

"Internal ones, more likely," put in Scarlett, who had followed her. "Sweet things don't often come our way. And speaking of sweet things, Miss Durant, won't you yourself mess with me out here in the open? Just for the experience, ye know. It isn't really cold. The snow is left over from the winter, but it's a summer sun overhead."

"It does look tempting," confessed Evelyn, as Barney appeared, bringing with him provender, with its equipments, for two, deftly arranging it on a table by the bench. "I'm early for my appointment—I mean, I have plenty of time, and Sarah can chaperon the girls."

"Have ye room enough?" with solicitude inquired the soldier, placing himself beside her.

"Plenty, thanks. Have you?"

"Too much," he protested, "on the wrong side." The bench having no back, he gallantly supplied the lack. "Allow me to make ye an arm-chair."

Evelyn properly edged away. "Sergeant, are these your company manners?"

"Surely, since two's company."

"Come, come, I can't permit you so much latitude!"

"If you knew your map ye'd know that the further north ye go the closer the lines of latitude are drawn."

"Speaking of maps, I wish you'd tell me exactly where we are?"

"Faith, where I am is exactly what I'm trying to find out—how far I've gone with you."

"Do be sensible, if you can, and tell me where we are sitting, geographically speaking."

"Geographically speaking, we are sitting on the provisional boundary between our respective nations."

"Oh! Please don't add it is called provisional because one stops here for provisions."

"At any rate, provisions don't stop here long. Here, I've saved ye the last bean."

"Thanks. I take my bean wherever I find it."

"Good! Now will ye poach on my preserves?"

"With pleasure!" Evelyn held out her tin plate. "I love peaches."

"Ah, I'm more exclusive. I only love a peach!"

"One at a time, no doubt, you mean. And for the sake of your taste, I hope, fresh ones, not canned. By the way, you, I believe, would write them tinned?"

"But we both pronounce them excellent." Scarlett divided with her the last spoonful of the fruit.

"A century ago you taxed my tea." Leaning over, Evelyn took the extra lump of sugar from the young man's saucer. "So now, to even things, I steal your sugar."

"Quite right," he acquiesced, "since revenge is sweet."

"How silly this climate makes one, though I wish all international differences could be so bloodlessly adjusted," remarked Evelyn. "Suppose, instead of war, we had spelling matches! That, indeed, would bring peace with honor."

"Sure and there'd be fighting over peace," the soldier told her, "since you would spell it H-O-N-O-R, while I should insert a U."

"Naturally," replied Evelyn. "Your nation's honor always will include U."

"A pretty compliment," conceded Scarlett, "but I feel as if I had been spelling for it." As they had finished he put aside the dinner-tray. "I wonder if I shall ever persuade you to cross the line in earnest?"

"And pray, why should I do the crossing? Why should not you be the one to come over to the enemy?"

"Ah, I'm a soldier! And I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not HONOUR more!"

"All very fine, sir, but, like England, somehow you have advanced imperceptibly across the boundary."

"Oh, no!" Scarlett moved closer to her. "Like England, when I make advances I push the line ahead of me."

"Remember the old commination," Evelyn exhorted him, "'Cursed be he that moveth his neighbor's landmark.'"

"That was ancient law," Scarlett reminded her. "The modern dispensation bids thee love thy neighbor as thyself. And up here, where both nations work side by side, common hardship makes us truly neighbors, next of kin. Look yonder!" He pointed to the summit of the watershed, the ridge-pole of the mountain range, where, sheltered under one roof, were the Customs offices of two nations, while from lofty flag-poles floated, side by side, the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. "The snow, as it melts, parts into two rivers, one running down into the Dominion, the other into the States, each bearing greetings from the sister flags. And, listen! In the tent, to the same tune the two national anthems are being sung——" Rising, he bared his head, Evelyn standing beside him, while in perfect attune the banqueters sang, according to their allegiance: "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," or "God Save the King."

"After all," commented Scarlett, "peace is spelled without a difference, both sides of the boundary; and, lip to lip, our views will be identical on the way of spelling love."

"And how may that be?" inquired Evelyn, gathering up her furs and moving away. "In love-letters?" As Scarlett caught up with her she quickened her pace, remarking, "I must go now. Really, Sergeant, you ought some day to give us a lecture on these theories of yours, for I have always wondered how an Irishman makes love."

"Like a lover, sure," promptly retorted Scarlett, catching her in his arms and stooping his head to hers.

To her surprise, Evelyn found herself more than half consenting to his kiss even while trying to rebuke it. Before, however, she had found breath to protest, Scarlett released her hurriedly in silence, for at the moment Nick, with his custodian, and followed by his faithful henchmen, came from the tent, escorting Sarah and the orphans in an aura of national and personal good will, while a messenger came to inform the Sergeant that the United States representative, to whom the prisoner's person was to be delivered, had arrived.

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!"