heir stead; and so when King Ahab heard the
words of the wild prophet he was both angry and afraid.

Elijah did not wait for an answer, but fled out of the king's house and
out of the city; for he knew that when King Ahab told his terrible wife
of what he had said, she would send out men to capture him, dead or
alive. She had tried to kill every prophet of God in the land, and
thought indeed that she had done so; but Obadiah, the king's officer,
had hidden one hundred in caves by the riverside, and kept them alive
with bread and water.

So the wild prophet Elijah, with his sheepskin cape or mantle on his
shoulders, fled away to the lonely country of rocks and bushes, wild
beasts and robbers. But he had no fear, for he had no riches to lose,
and he always carried a stout staff in his hand; and no one ever
refused him shelter, for he was known everywhere as "the Man of God."

He fled eastwards, having received a message from God to go and hide in
the deep valley of the Cherith, a small stream running between high
banks down to the river Jordan--a place of caves where many ravens had
their nests; and he had been told also that the black ravens would feed
him there with the food they brought. There he hid himself from King
Ahab's men, who were searching the country for him; and the ravens
brought him food morning and evening, and he drank of the water of the
brook until it dried up, for there was no rain.

When he could no longer live there he had another message from God,
bidding him leave his hiding-place. Climbing the wooded hills of
Galilee, he started to go down the other side to the town of Zarephath,
by the seashore, where he would be out of King Ahab's country. With
his thick staff in his hand and his woolly mantle on his shoulders, his
head shaded by a shawl hanging down each side of his face, he crossed
the plains, and going up a cleft in the hills, passed between them
towards the coast--a journey of about seventy miles, that would take
him at least four days, for he would have to keep out of sight of the
king's men.

Sleeping now in a cave, now in a friendly tent, avoiding villages and
bands of men, the wild prophet came to the fields outside Zarephath and
waited; for the place was a walled town with a low stone archway, and
gatekeepers to question all who came in.

Now as he loitered among the trees a poor woman came out to gather
broken branches to kindle her fire, and the prophet called to her,--