But for all of Spoof's urging our oxen plodded stolidly along the wintry trail, now barely distinguishable from the grey whiteness of the plains. Flakes of snow were falling, and on every side the pall of night surrounded us, drawing its circle closer and closer. The trail was firm, but the surrounding snow was loose and deep, and to pass us Jake would have to plunge his horses through it, at considerable risk of upsetting his cutter. The old land guide, however, hesitated not a moment for such a consideration as that. Swinging his horses from the trail he cut out at them with his whip, and they rushed by us, throwing a snowy spray like a torpedo boat passing a liner. But as it is so often the occasion that makes the man, so now was it the occasion that proved Spoof's resourcefulness. Climbing over the dashboard of the jumper he ran along the tongue and threw himself upon Buck's ample back, which immediately began to heave and gyrate with an entirely new motion. Whether it was as a protest against the liberty which Spoof had taken, or whether it was that the legs about his sides brought back memories of youthful days when some bare-legged urchin on a Manitoba farm rode him in wild triumph through the pasture field of the parental herd, matters not; the fact is that Buck presently broke into a most unprecedented gallop, and his mate, willy-nilly, followed suit. They were just in time to prevent Jake's party getting on the trail ahead of us, and in great glee we careered by them. "Forced draught!" shouted Spoof. "Fourteen knots!" But our triumph was short lived. Unaccustomed to such speed, the oxen presently began to wobble in their course and suddenly floundered off the trail. "Hard a-port, hard a-port!" Spoof shouted. But he was too late, or his directions were misunderstood. Over went the jumper, flinging its freshly married and other contents into the snow. The speed of the oxen wrenched the tongue from the wreck, and they continued homeward in greater haste than before. Spoof jumped free and barely escaped a defiant flourish of Buck's heels as they flipped by him. Ruefully he gazed upon the wreckage. "I told the bally bullocks to swing hard a-port," he explained, "and instead of that they slithered off to starboard." By this time Jake and his party were again beside us. "I hope no one is hurt," said the minister, as he took Jean's free arm to help her out of a drift. It seems that in some way I had become entangled in the other. "A rather rough start on the sea of matrimony, Mrs. Lane, I am afraid," he added to Marjorie, who was shaking the snow out of her hair.