so often spoke, and who were
considered of such rare excellence as to equal all that savage ingenuity
could imagine in the way of loveliness. His observation of Ellen was
less marked, but notwithstanding the warlike and chastened expression
of his eye, there was much of the homage, which man is made to pay to
woman, even in the more cursory look he sometimes turned on her maturer
and perhaps more animated beauty. This admiration, however, was so
tempered by his habits, and so smothered in the pride of a warrior, as
completely to elude every eye but that of the trapper, who was too well
skilled in Indian customs, and was too well instructed in the importance
of rightly conceiving, the character of the stranger, to let the
smallest trait, or the most trifling of his movements, escape him. In
the mean time, the unconscious Ellen herself moved about the feeble
and less resolute Inez, with her accustomed assiduity and tenderness,
exhibiting in her frank features those changing emotions of joy and
regret which occasionally beset her, as her active mind dwelt on the
decided step she had just taken, with the contending doubts and hopes,
and possibly with some of the mental vacillation, that was natural to
her situation and sex.

Not so Paul; conceiving himself to have obtained the two things dearest
to his heart, the possession of Ellen and a triumph over the sons of
Ishmael, he now enacted his part, in the business of the moment, with as
much coolness as though he was already leading his willing bride, from
solemnising their nuptials before a border magistrate, to the security
of his own dwelling. He had hovered around the moving family, during
the tedious period of their weary march, concealing himself by day, and
seeking interviews with his betrothed as opportunities offered, in the
manner already described, until fortune and his own intrepidity
had united to render him successful, at the very moment when he was
beginning to despair, and he now cared neither for distance, nor
violence, nor hardships. To his sanguine fancy and determined resolution
all the rest was easily to be achieved. Such were his feelings, and such
in truth they seemed to be. With his cap cast on one side, and whistling
a low air, he thrashed among the bushes, in order to make a place
suitable for the females to repose on, while, from time to time, he cast
an approving glance at the agile form of Ellen, as she tripped past him,
engaged in her own share