all the feelings of a father, but they were smothered
in the lassitude of a Creole. Like his spiritual governor, he began to
think that they had been wrong in consigning one so pure, so young, so
lovely, and above all so pious, to the arms of a heretic: and he was
fain to believe that the calamity, which had befallen his age, was a
judgment on his presumption and want of adherence to established forms.
It is true that, as the whispers of the congregation came to his ears,
he found present consolation in their belief; but then nature was too
powerful, and had too strong a hold of the old man's heart, not to give
rise to the rebellious thought, that the succession of his daughter to
the heavenly inheritance was a little premature.

But Middleton, the lover, the husband, the bridegroom--Middleton was
nearly crushed by the weight of the unexpected and terrible blow.
Educated himself under the dominion of a simple and rational faith, in
which nothing is attempted to be concealed from the believers, he could
have no other apprehensions for the fate of Inez than such as grew out
of his knowledge of the superstitious opinions she entertained of his
own church. It is needless to dwell on the mental tortures that he
endured, or all the various surmises, hopes, and disappointments, that
he was fated to experience in the first few weeks of his misery. A
jealous distrust of the motives of Inez, and a secret, lingering, hope
that he should yet find her, had tempered his enquiries, without however
causing him to abandon them entirely. But time was beginning to deprive
him, even of the mortifying reflection that he was intentionally, though
perhaps temporarily, deserted, and he was gradually yielding to the
more painful conviction that she was dead, when his hopes were suddenly
revived, in a new and singular manner.

The young commander was slowly and sorrowfully returning from an evening
parade of his troops, to his own quarters, which stood at some little
distance from the place of the encampment, and on the same high bluff
of land, when his vacant eyes fell on the figure of a man, who by
the regulations of the place, was not entitled to be there, at that
forbidden hour. The stranger was meanly dressed, with every appearance
about his person and countenance, of squalid poverty and of the most
dissolute habits. Sorrow had softened the military pride of Middleton,
and, as he passed the crouching form of the intruder, he said, in tones