At sight of every shooting meteor, Julia clung almost convulsively to August.
When they entered the castle, Jonas and Cynthy were already standing up before the presiding elder, and he was about to begin.

Cynthy's face showed her sense of the awfulness of marrying at a moment of such fearful expectation, or perhaps she was troubling herself for fear that so much happiness out of heaven was to be had only in the commission of a capital sin.

But, like most people whose consciences are stronger than their intellects, she found great consolation in taking refuge under the wing of ecclesiastical authority.

To be married by a presiding elder was the best thing in the world next to being married by a bishop.
Whatever fear of the swift-coming judgment others might have felt, the benignant old elder was at peace.

Common-sense, a clean conscience, and a child-like faith enlightened his countenance, and since he tried to be always ready, and since his meditations made the things of the other life ever present, his pulse would scarcely have quickened if he had felt sure that the archangel's trump would sound in an hour.