ice, He'll have you, and no mistake.
There's the money, at any rate. Your mother will want you for the next
five years, and you'll see your way clearer by that time, I expect."

"And do you mean that the money is to be mine--for the university--
whether I am to be a minister or not? I want to understand, Miss
Bethia."

"Well, it was with the view of your being a minister, like your father,
that I first thought of it, I don't deny," said Miss Bethia, gravely.
"But it's yours any way, as soon as your mother thinks best to let you
have it. If the Lord don't want you for his minister, I'm very sure _I_
don't. If He wants you, He'll have you; and that's as good a way to
leave it as any."

There was nothing more to be said, and Miss Bethia had her way after
all. And a very good way it was.

"And we'll just tell the neighbours that I am to take care of the books
till you know where you are to put them--folks take notice of everything
so. That'll be enough to say. And, David, you must make out a list of
them,--two, indeed,--one to leave with me and one to take, and I'll see
to all the rest."

And so it was settled. The book-case and the books were never moved.
They stand in the study still, and are likely to do so for a good while
to come.

This is as good a place as any to tell of Miss Bethia's good fortune.
She was disposed, at first, to think her fortune anything but good; for
it took out of her hands the house that had been her home for the last
thirty years of her life--where she had watched by the death-bed of
father, mother, sister. It destroyed the little twenty-acre farm,
which, in old times, she had sowed and planted and reaped with her own
hands, bringing to nothing the improvements which had been the chief
interest of her life in later years; for, in spite of her determined
resistance, the great Railway Company had its way, as great companies
usually do, and laid their plans, and carried them out, for making the
Gourlay Station there.

So the hills were levelled, and the hollows filled up; the fences and
farming implements, and the house itself, carried out of the way, and
all the ancient landmarks utterly removed.

"Just as if there wasn't enough waste land in the country, but they must
take the home of a solitary old woman to put their depots, and their
engines, and their great wood-piles on," said Miss Bethia, making a
martyr of herself.

But, of course, she was well paid for it all, and, to