Chapter 34

--Methought, I heard a voice.
--Shakspeare.

The water-courses were at their height, and the boat went down the
swift current like a bird. The passage proved prosperous and speedy.
In less than a third of the time, that would have been necessary for
the same journey by land, it was accomplished by the favour of those
rapid rivers. Issuing from one stream into another, as the veins of
the human body communicate with the larger channels 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
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