of
life, they soon entered the grand artery of the western waters and landed
safely, at the very door of the father of Inez.
    The joy of Don Augustin, and the embarrassment of the worthy Father Ignatius
may be imagined. The former wept and returned thanks to Heaven, the latter
returned thanks, and did not weep. The mild provincials were too happy to raise
any questions on the character of so joyful a restoration, and, by a sort of
general consent it soon came to be an admitted opinion that the bride of
Middleton had been kidnapped by a villain and that she was restored to her
friends by human agency. There were as respects this belief, certainly a few
sceptics, but then they enjoyed their doubts in private, with that species of
sublimated and solitary gratification that a miser finds in gazing at his
growing, but useless, hoards.
    In order to give the worthy priest something to employ his mind, Middleton
made him the instrument of uniting Paul and Ellen. The former consented to the
ceremony, because he found that all his friends laid great stress on the matter,
but shortly after he led his bride into the plains of Kentucky, under the
pretence of paying certain customary visits to sundry members of the family of
Hover. While there, he took occasion to have the marriage properly solemnized,
by a justice of the peace of his acquaintance, in whose ability to forge the
nuptial chain he had much more faith than in that of all the gownsmen within the
Pale of Rome. Ellen who appeared conscious that some extraordinary preventives
might prove necessary to keep one of so erratic a temper, as her partner, within
the proper matrimonial boundaries, raised no objections to these double knots,
and all parties were content.
    The local importance Middleton had acquired by his union with the daughter
of so affluent a proprietor as Don Augustin, united to his personal merit,
attracted the attention of the Government. He was soon employed in various
situations of responsibility and confidence, which both served to elevate his
character in the public estimation and to afford the means of patronage. The
bee-hunter was among the first of those to whom he saw fit to extend his favor.
It was far from difficult to find situations suited to the abilities of Paul in
the state of society that existed three and twenty years ago in those regions.
The efforts of Middleton and Inez in behalf of her husband were warmly and
sagaciously seconded by Ellen, and they succeeded, in process of time, in
working a great and beneficial change in his character. He soon became a
land-holder, then a prosperous cultivator