His friends followed him as he went slowly out of the palace gardens and away to the great tent of purple and crimson, which he liked to call the House of God, on Mount Zion; and they stopped outside when he drew the rich curtains apart and went in. There in the darkness he knelt, and with hands upraised bowed his face to the ground before God as he poured out his soul in prayer. After a time the king came out of the great tent again, and his friends and servants followed him as he returned to his palace. He had not yet spoken, and they could not understand why he did not weep and mourn for the child. He asked for food, and they wondered yet more as he ate from the dishes which the slaves brought him. "What is this that thou doest?" asked one of his friends. "While the child lived thou didst weep for him, and wouldst take no food; and now that he is dead thou dost rise and eat." They thought he had been only mourning as he lay for days on the floor; but he had been praying, and now he answered them,-- "While he was yet alive I fasted and wept; for I thought, 'Who knoweth whether God may not be merciful to me, and the child may live?' But now he is dead, and why should I fast? I cannot bring him back to life again. Some day I shall die and go to him, but he will not return to me." Whether such thoughts as these comforted the mother's heart, we are not told; but the king himself tried to comfort her. After a time she had another little boy, and she called him Solomon, "the peaceful one," for mothers chose the names in those days. And as his nurse carried him about the garden, clad in a little blue robe with white tassels, the people said that he too was a beautiful child; and he grew up to be good and wise and handsome, and loved his mother dearly. And years afterwards this child became the great King Solomon, whom all men thought so wise. ELIJAH AND THE WIDOW'S SON. Ahab, the wicked King of Israel, was sitting in his house at Samaria, when suddenly there appeared before him a wild-looking man, with long hair and a cape of woolly sheepskin on his shoulders, his rough tunic girdled with a broad belt of leather, and thick sandals on his feet. Elijah, the Prophet of God, was his name. Born and bred in the wild desert country, he now dwelt amid the hills and valleys of Gilead, across the river Jordan, and he had come to warn the king that trouble was in store for his kingdom. "As God lives, before whom I stand," he said, with upraised hand, "there shall not be dew or rain for years, but according to my word." And he said more, for this king was married to Jezebel, a wicked princess of another nation, who had got her husband to set up images and altars to Baal, a wooden idol, although he knew it was wrong. Also, to please his wife, Ahab had killed the priests of God, and set up priests of Baal in their stead; and so when King Ahab heard the words of the wild prophet he was both angry and afraid.