So we left the details in Spoof's hands, glad enough to be rid of responsibility for them. There was much to do, and Jack and I found ourselves banished to Twenty-two while the girls made use of the shanty on Fourteen for operations concerning which we were permitted to have nothing but curiosity. Their wedding splendor must, we knew, be designed with such skill as Marjorie and Jean possessed from the best of the clothing they had brought with them from the East. Love may laugh at locksmiths, but it has to bow to dollars and cents--when the trousseau is under consideration. Money, as Marjorie once remarked, may be bad for the heart, but it's good for the appearance. But there was no money to be had for this occasion, and Marjorie and Jean cut their cloth accordingly, literally as well as figuratively. Also, the news had to be broken to those at home. Each of us wrote a letter, although, to save postage, we enclosed them all in one envelope. There had been little correspondence since we came to the homesteads, mainly because we were as yet thirty miles from a post office, and letters might lie for a month without a chance of delivery. But this was something to be written about. We began with a circumstantial account of our first season on the prairies, and it was not until we had exhausted all other subjects, like a friend seeking a favor, that we got down to the business in hand. Such news as that would be in the old home down by the mill, with Christmas snowdrifts over the fences and the river running softly under its blanket of white! I recall that there was moonlight just then, and night on the prairie was a base of ivory cupped with an intangible bowl of blue. Always there was the nip of frost in the air, but it was a nip that was not unpleasant, and by no means did it succeed in confining us within doors. During these bright nights Jean and I took long, never-to-be-forgotten walks across the snow-piled, moon-swept plains. I could feel her firm little figure swaying with mine in our strong stride across the wind-packed snow, while our shadows--our shadow, I should say--fell in grotesque caricature by our side. There were moments when we were very, very close to the Infinity which bounded us on every hand, and the wonder of that great, white, silent ocean would surge into our hearts and mingle with the wonder of our love. A quarter of a mile from the shanties and we were as isolated from all living things as if we had been let down in the midst of the Polar Sea, or drawn by some mighty spirit into the farthest void of space. Even the boisterous wind paid attention enough to blur our footprints out behind us and so complete that sense of infinity of isolation. We were so tremendously alone that it seemed the world was full of ourselves and God. But a gaunt phantom of doubt and uncertainty stalked us even on those moon-lit walks. CHAPTER XVI.