The boy in his mother's lap moved restlessly about and uttered a low moan.
"Is there no rice, father?" he cried plaintively.
"None, my son," Niu answered with a sigh. "I have searched the temple, only to find it bare. You must wait."
His wife's mouth trembled pitifully as she listened, and noticing this he said to her:
"We must endure as best we can. Night now overshadows us, and there is no human habitation in sight. We must rest here until the dawn and then hurry on, hoping ere the day is done to find food for all. If our strength fail we can but die," he added in a lower tone, as if speaking to himself, but the woman heard it and looked up.
"I am very tired now," she murmured, "and the pangs of hunger torment me. All that I had to eat to-day I gave to the children."
"I know," Niu said. "I too am hungry, but there is no help for it." So saying he sat down; but the girl, despite her weariness, built a pedestal out of the fragments around her, upon which she gently placed the head of her dishonored Buddha, for she was a most devout little heathen, and then she crept quietly back into the temple.