ly 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 solemnised, 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 favour. 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 of the soil, and
shortly after a town-officer. By that progressive change in fortune,
which in the republic is often seen to be so singularly accompanied by
a corresponding improvement in knowledge and self-respect, he went on,
from step to step, until his wife enjoyed the maternal delight of seeing
her children placed far beyond the danger of returning to that state
from which both their parents had issued. Paul is actually at this
moment a member of the lower branch of the legisl