“Alexa,” rejoined the laird with solemnity, “you ought never to mention luck. There is no such thing. It was either for the young man's sins, or to prevent worse, or for necessary discipline, that the train was overturned. The cause is known to _Him_. All are in His hands--and we must beware of attempting to take any out of His hands, for it can not be done.” “Then, father, if there be no chance, our part was ordered too. So there is the young man in our spare room, and we must receive our share of the trouble as from the hand of the Lord.” “Certainly, my dear! it was the expense I was thinking of. I was only lamenting--bear me witness, I was not opposing--the will of the Lord. A man's natural feelings remain.” “If the thing is not to be helped, let us think no more about it!” “It is the expense, my dear! Will you not let your mind rest for a moment upon the fact? I am doing my utmost to impress it upon you. For other expenses there is always something to show; for this there will be nothing, positively nothing!” “Not the mended leg, father?” “The money will vanish, I tell you, as a tale that is told.” “It is our life that vanishes that way!” “The simile suits either. So long as we do not use the words of Scripture irreverently, there is no harm in making a different application of them. There is no irreverence here: next to the grace of God, money is the thing hardest to get and hardest to keep. If we are not wise with it, the grace--I mean money--will not go far.” “Not so far as the next world, anyhow!” said Alexa, as if to herself. “How dare you, child! The Redeemer tells us to make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when we die it may receive us into everlasting habitations!” “I read the passage this morning, father: it is _they_, not _it_, will receive you. And I have heard that it ought to be translated, 'make friends _with_, or _by means of_ the mammon of unrighteousness.” “I will reconsider the passage. We must not lightly change even the translated word!” The laird had never thought that it might be of consequence to him one day to have friends in the other world. Neither had he reflected that the Lord did not regard the obligation of gratitude as ceasing with this life. Alexa had reason to fear that her father made a friend _of_, and never a friend _with_ the mammon of unrighteousness. At the same time the half-penny he put in the plate every Sunday must go a long way if it was not estimated, like that of the poor widow, according to the amount he possessed, but according to the difficulty he found in parting with it. “After weeks, perhaps months of nursing and food and doctor's stuff,” resumed the laird, “he will walk away, and we shall see not a plack of the money he carries with him. The visible will become the invisible, the present the absent!” “The little it will cost you, father--”