e was enough. One step and she fell half fainting at Elisha's
feet, pouring out her soul in thanks to God and to the man of God.
Turning to her boy, she gathered him up tenderly in her arms and bore
him down the stairs to her own room in the house below. And thus was
her boy restored to her alive.

A LITTLE JEWISH MAID.

Ben-hadad, the dark-eyed King of Syria, could no longer leap into his
chariot and drive his swift horses through the fields as he used to do.
He could not draw the bow of steel or fling the heavy spear as far or
as straight as the young men of his tribe, for he was getting old; and
he had given up going with his warriors on their fighting across the
Jordan, leaving it to his younger chieftains.

His home was in the beautiful town of Damascus, set in a land so rich
and green with tapering trees, vineyards, and fields of grass, and
watered with such delightful streams, that the Arabs, coming on their
camels from the yellow sands of the hot desert, cried out, when they
saw its white walls hung with green creepers, that it shone "like a
handful of pearls in a green cup."

He ruled the tribes of Syria from that walled city, and in the
spring-time of the year his chiefs gathered the young warriors to make
up their minds where they should go to fight and plunder. Among the
chiefs was Naaman the Syrian, a young man who led them out to battle
when the king could not go, and had several times beaten their foes.
Sitting among his chiefs, with his royal spear in his hand, a band of
gold round his brow, and rings of gold on his arms and legs, the old
king talked with them about fighting the men of Israel, and gave them
their orders; and best of all his warriors the king loved Naaman the
Syrian.

Now when Naaman blew the king's horns and beat the king's drums up and
down the country, calling the young men of the tribes for a raid across
the Jordan, it was either to steal cattle and corn, or to capture
slaves; and boys and girls were the slaves they liked best.

One day, when he returned from one of these slave-raids, Naaman brought
back with him a little Jewish maid; and she looked so pretty with her
dark eyes and ruddy cheeks that he gave her as a present to his Syrian
wife, to wait upon her and run her messages. When her mistress washed
her hands, the little maid held the basin on bended knee. When she
dressed her dark hair, she held the comb and the oil, and the little
pots of yellow dye for her