od could manage the universe; it was for him
to be found doing his duty as a faithful servant. And then it would be
just like stepping out of one door into another, whenever death or the
judgment should come.

While the old man was getting ready to leave, Julia and August slipped
away, fearing lest their absence should be discovered. But the
peacefulness of the old elder's face had entered into their souls, and
they wished that they too were solemnly pronounced man and wife, with so
sweet a benediction upon their union.

"I do not feel much anxious about the day of judgment or the
millennium," said August, whose idiom was sometimes a little broken.
"When I was so near dying I felt satisfied to die after you had kissed
my lips. But now that it seems we have come upon the world's last days,
I wish I were married to you. I do not know how things will be in the
new heaven and the new earth. But I should like you to be my wife there,
or at least to have been my wife on earth, if only for one hour."

And then he proposed that they should be made man and wife now in the
world's last hour. It was not wrong. It could not give her mother
heart-disease, for she would not know of it till she should hear it in
the land where there are neither marriages nor sickness. Julia could not
see any sin in her disobedience under such circumstances. She did so
much want to go into the New Jerusalem as the wedded wife of August "the
grand," as she fondly called him.

And so in the stillness of that awful night they walked back to Andrew's
castle, and found the venerable preacher, with saddle-bags on his arm,
ready to mount his horse, for the presiding elder of that day had no
leisure time. Jonas and Cynthy stood bidding him good-by. And the old
man was saying again that if we were always ready it would be like
stepping from one door into another. But he thought it as wrong to waste
time gazing up into heaven to see Christ come, as it had been to gaze
after Him when He went away. Even Jonas's voice was a little softened by
the fearful thought ever present of the coming on of that awful midnight
of the eleventh of August. All were surprised to see the two young
people come back.

"Father Williams," said August, "we thought we should like to go into
the New Jerusalem man and wife. Will you marry us?"

"Sensible to the last!" cried Jonas.

"According to the laws of this State," said Mr. Williams, "you can not
be married without a license fr