“The people in the other islands and in Lorn want all they can grow as much as we,” replied Katie, “for their fishery grows with ours. Meat and bannocks are as dear in all the countries round as they were here last year.” “Then we may thank farmer Duff for all the pains he has taken with the soil of his fields and the stock of his pastures. He reaps just double what he reaped fifteen years ago.” “And so he had need, for there are more than double the number of mouths to feed. Besides the strangers that have come to settle, look at the families that have grown up. Where Mr. Callum used to spend a few days now and then, there is Mary Duff’s husband and her five bairns; then there are your nine, Ella—how your household is increased!” “There lies one brother under the gray stone,” said Ella, “and Ronald seeks his bannocks elsewhere; but there is Fergus’s tribe as well as my own; and setting one against Murdoch’s son that died, and another against his daughter that went off with the soldier, there is still more than double the number by far.” “Even supposing,” added Katie, “that Murdoch’s daughter does not come back upon her father with her children, which I have heard is likely. But, Ella, Duff’s farm ought to yield double and double for ever, if it is to go on to feed us, for our children will marry and have their little tribes as we have. If you and I live to be like many grandmothers in these islands, we shall see our twenty or thirty grand-children, and perhaps our eighty or ninety great-grand-children.” “And then,” replied Ella, “may God keep us from the poverty that weighs on such! May we never see our strong men wasting on shell-fish and weeds, and our aged people dropping cold and hungry into their deathbeds, and our young mothers tending their sickly infants, knowing that food and warmth might save them, and unable to bring them either the one or the other!” “Do not let us think of it,” said Katie, looking round upon her domestic comforts. “Providence has blessed us thus far, and let us not be too keen to foresee the evil day that man’s power cannot remove.” Ella was silent. Katie proceeded,— “Surely man cannot remove that day, Ella, though you say nothing. Let farmer Duff do all he can; let every foot of land be tilled that will nourish an ear of barley, still the day may come; and what else can man do?” Ella made no direct reply. Presently she observed that Dan and his wife seemed not to care for the evils of such a time, since they lived by choice on the poorest food, and provided themselves with nothing that they could lose in the worst of seasons. “They are content, always content,” observed the widow; “and they say they have all that is necessary; and they wonder that we can trouble ourselves to obtain anything that is not necessary: but I tell them we do not; I think a chimney, and a window, and bedding, and decent clothes all necessary for the children.”