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).
Again the blessed book was read aloud; again he led the prayer, that was prayer indeed, for it arose from a sense of actual want, and it arose in the assurance that, through the merits of the Redeemer, that want, the temporal as well as the spiritual, would be supplied. And the thought of the mercies of yesterday quickened his faith, and gave animation to his voice as he raised it in the hymn of praise: and then he “went forth to his labour,” for that was his part, and he felt strong to do it.
We will not prolong our history by recording the details of days that came and went in like manner: for about three weeks the father continued to work at the embankment, returning to his family with the fruits of his labour every evening. But day by day his strength declined, and on the fifth of February, it was two hours past midnight before he returned to his anxious wife. He found her in earnest prayer, and as he stepped over the threshold, the words, “Lord, wilt Thou leave us to perish, the mother with the little ones?” fell on his ear in accents wrung from an agonized spirit. In the intenseness of her supplication she had not heard even his approach. Her head which had been flung back was suddenly bent forward, her hands relaxed somewhat of the tightness of their grasp, and the anguish seemed to have passed away as she fervently and firmly added,—“Yet not my will, but Thine be done.” It must be so indeed, for would our gracious God have bidden us “cast our burden upon him,” unless it had been his purpose to receive it from us?[4]
Her eye now fell upon her husband, and a strange chill crept over her as she remarked his wild and haggard look. Yes, the plague had begun! nature overtasked day by day, could hold out no longer; and though the spirit of the man had sustained his infirmities, his strength had failed at last. For some days he had been struggling with low fever, but he felt that he could struggle no more, and that the hand of death was upon him. He looked round upon his wife and children, but he remembered who had said,—“Leave thy fatherless children to Me, and let thy widows trust in Me;” and he felt that in exchanging the weak ministry of his unnerved arm for the strength of the “everlasting arms,” there was no room for lamentation.
He tried to read the chapter as usual, but his sight failed, and he lay back upon the clay floor, and never rose from it again. The fever rapidly assumed the worst form of typhus, and ere the third day closed in, Margaret M’Kenzie was a widow indeed, and desolate. We will not linger over details too painful to be needlessly dwelt upon; we will not unveil a sorrow too sacred to be exposed and dissected; but we must observe, that there is one feature in the Highland character which exercised a painful influence on the poor family in this their hour of deepest affliction. From the rareness among them of such visitations, any disorder of a contagious or epidemic kind is regarded by the Highlanders with such a degree of horror as leads them to shrink from any offices involving contact with the sufferers, and thus there was none to help; and oh, who but those who have known what it is to feel the loneliness of sorrow, can realize the strong consolation that the M’Kenzies found in the assurance of the sympathy of Christ, and in the remembrance that of him in his sufferings, it is written,—“Of the people there was none with me?”
The elder boy had been sent to the nearest place to procure a coffin, and to promise the cow in payment,—it was their only remaining possession, except the heather mattress, and that none would take, from dread of the fever,—and Margaret’s wedding gown, which her husband had tried to exchange for money or for food; but no one had either to give for it.
When the carpenter heard the boy’s name, he shrunk back, and bade him be gone, in a voice in which terror predominated over sympathy.
In due time, however, the coffin was brought to the door, and there deposited; and of the few clansmen who attended to bear their kinsman to the grave, not one would enter the dwelling to assist in moving the remains of him to whom living or dying, under any other circumstances, they would have refused nothing. Poor Margaret! that was a trial! but not greater than the promise,—“As thy day, so shall thy strength be.” It was indeed a dark, dark day; but the promise could not be hidden, even though it was a darkness to be felt. How it was accomplished, the poor widow knew not. The first-born had helped, and fallen panting at the threshold, fainting with exertion and with horror; and when the door was opened, those without drew back, and bade her, though in tones of solemn pity, lay her burden in its narrow bed herself; and then they signed to her to retire. She closed the door behind her, and in a few minutes they drew round the coffin, closed, and bore it to the boat, and rowed in silence to the island resting-place of the M’Kenzies, in the middle of the lake.
There is something peculiarly solemn in standing on an island of graves. The very dust that the summer breeze wafts over us, may indeed remind us of our mortality,—suggest a thought that it, perhaps, was once animated: but the complete isolation of such a spot as this, fixes the mind to the contemplation, as though thought for once were fettered, and the subject of her meditations were bound upon her, like the wave upon that sepulchral shore,—and so it was felt by all now, and not a word was spoken as they laid M’Kenzie in his long home.