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," exclaimed Elisha to his servant, shading his eyes from the sun with his hand, as he looked and saw her yet afar off, riding in haste. Gehazi ran as he was told, and when they met he asked her in an anxious voice,-- "Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child?" "It is well," she answered, for a mother's heart is strange at such a time; and she rode forward in silence until she came to Elisha standing at his house door. Getting off the ass, she threw herself down before the prophet, and holding his feet, lay there with her face to the ground, saying nothing. Gehazi came forward to raise her. "Let her alone," Elisha said, looking at the grief-stricken figure at his feet. "Her soul is vexed within her, and God hath hid the matter from me, and hath not told me." When she heard these words she found her voice, and murmured, with her face to the ground,-- "Did I ask a son of my lord? and did I not say, 'Do not deceive me'?" Then her tears fell fast. Elisha understood her at once. "Gird up thy tunic with thy belt," he said, speaking to Gehazi, "and take my staff, and go. Greet no man by the way, and answer no man's greeting; but lay it on the face of the child," handing him his staff as he spoke. And the man started at once to run down the path from the village. "As God liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee," the mother murmured at the prophet's feet.