came true, and the Shunammite's heart leaped
with joy as she nursed her little babe. Years passed, and the
courtyard echoed with the shouts of the merry child, whose bare feet
pattered all day about the sunny square, scaring the gray doves up to
the housetop. Holding by his mother's hand, he went up the stairs to
the little chamber on the wall, where the vine spread its broad leaves;
and there he saw the table and the little bed, the red jar of water and
the cakes of bread waiting for the prophet of God. And when he was
five years old, with ruddy cheeks and soft hair, he was beautiful as an
angel of God.

Now one day, in the hot harvest weather, the little fellow ran away
from the house down to the field where his father and the reapers were
at work; and he ran to and fro in the hot morning sun, sometimes
chasing the bright butterflies, sometimes following the men as they cut
down the grain with their sharp sickles.

But after a while he came to his father, calling, "O my head, my head!"
for he had got sunstroke with the great heat. At once the old farmer
bade one of his men carry the boy to his mother; and he lay on her knee
in a darkened room, crying out in an agony of pain and thirst, while
she tried as best she could to relieve his suffering. But by noon all
was still, and the stricken mother carried his body up to the little
chamber and laid it on the prophet's bed, and going out gently closed
the door. Her heart was like lead as she went down the steps to her
own room, for all the light seemed to have gone out of her world, and
now what was she to do?

Calling her husband up from the fields, the Shunammite woman asked him
to send a servant to her with an ass, that she might ride to Elisha at
Carmel and return again. The father did not know what had happened to
his boy, and asked why she wished to go that day, as it was neither new
moon nor Sabbath, her usual times for taking such a journey.

"It is well!" was all her reply, for her heart was crushed, and she had
no words to utter. So the ass was saddled, and she said to her
servant,--

"Go forward; and do not slacken the riding unless I tell thee."

Then they went out of the village at a quick pace, and along the plain,
among yellow harvest-fields, and through the little streams, and over
the Kishon River, and up into the wooded gorge leading to the prophet's
home on the green mount of Carmel.

"Yonder is the Shunammite woman; run and meet her," ex