The poor respited cow gave what she could—a scanty supply, all thin and watery! and unlike the rich abundance she had formerly yielded; still it was precious, and as Margaret saw the colour stealing over her husband’s wan face, she was thankful that Collie had been spared. If they could but manage to keep her alive still, but the skin hung in huge wrinkles over the projecting bones, and except the dry and withered bracken, fodder there was none for her. To kindle the few smouldering peats that lay upon the hearth, and to prepare a mess of porridge for her husband, was Margaret’s next care, but M’Kenzie protested that he was abundantly refreshed already, and that he was too sleepy to wait for the cooking of the porridge. Margaret urged him, but he would not be persuaded, and they closed the day with prayer and reading, and together joined in praising Him who had made good his promise of the morning, and supplied their need,—“I shall not _want_;” and as they lay down on their heather mattress with their little ones, all sense of want was gone, and filled with the consciousness of their Heavenly Father’s presence with them, and of his love towards them, his everlasting love in Christ Jesus, they slept in peace! Reader, what would _they_ have had to sustain their fainting spirits if they had been living without God in the world? But morning came again, and with it the cries of the little ones for bread. The elder children tried to hush them, but they had had nothing except an occasional sip of milk the day before, and their cries were only to be stopped by food. Margaret soon rose and prepared the porridge, asking God’s blessing on that which He had given. They stood round and eat by turns, beginning at the youngest save one, who was an infant at the mother’s breast. But when it came to M’Kenzie’s turn, he shook his head, and looked away. “Nae lassie, nae, I canna eat the children’s bread,” he exclaimed. But now the wife would not be refused; “And what is your strength but the children’s bread?” she replied, “ah, man! ye maun eat, or ye canna work; and neither bit nor sup shall pass _my_ lips till ye hae eaten what’s there. I’ve mair on the fire for the bairns, and you’re wanting to be awa’, for its a sair, sair bit, that ye hae to gang till your work.” “Dinna ca’ it _sair_, lassie, and I’ll do as ye would hae me, for oh, its mony and mony a braw Highlander that looking on a family o’ hungry weans would bless God for the like, even if the wage were less;” and he eat up the porridge as he was bidden (there might be a matter of a tea-cup full).