Then Queen Esther begged Mordecai to gather all the Jews together who were in Shushan, and to bid them fast and pray for three days; and she and her maidens would fast too; and at the end of that time, she said, "I will go in to the King, which is not according to the law, and if I perish, I perish." Esther was brave because she knew that she had God on her side; and she believed that He would answer the prayers they were all offering up. [Illustration: QUEEN ESTHER BEFORE AHASUERUS.] So on the third day Queen Esther put on her Royal robes, and went into the Inner Court and stood before the King. When King Ahasuerus saw his beautiful young Queen standing there so meekly, he held out the Golden Sceptre which was in his hand. And she drew near and touched the top of the sceptre. And when he asked her what request she had to make, the King must have been astonished at her reply, for she only asked that the King and Haman should come to a banquet which she had prepared for them. So when they came to the Banquet, the King asked the Queen again what her petition was? And she said if the King and Haman would come to a Banquet with her, again to-morrow, she would then tell the King what her request was. So Haman went out from Queen Esther's Banquet very proud; and he told his wife and his friends of his second invitation, but he said that nothing was any pleasure to him, so long as Mordecai, the Jew, sat in the King's Gate. Then his wife and his friends advised him to make a gallows fifty feet high, and to get the King to let him hang Mordecai on it. But that night the King could not sleep, and one of his servants fetched a roll of the Chronicles of the Kingdom, and he read to him how Mordecai had once saved the King's life. And in the morning the King asked Haman what would be suitable to do to "the man that the King delighted to honour?" But Haman little thought that when he proposed to set the man on the King's own horse, dressed in the King's Royal clothes, that it would be Mordecai who was to be honoured, and not himself! But the King told Haman to lead Mordecai round the town, and to proclaim: "Thus shall it be done to the man whom the King delighteth to honour." After this Haman went to the Banquet that Esther had prepared. He little knew what the Queen's request was going to be! For Esther told the King that a great plot had been made to destroy her and all her people, and that this wicked Haman was the one who had planned it all! Then Haman was afraid before the King and Queen. You can picture the anger of the King, and when he was told of the gallows which Haman had prepared for Mordecai, he ordered that Haman should be hanged there at once. Then the Queen begged that letters might be sent to stop all the Jews being killed, and Ahasuerus sent urgent posts on mules and horses and swift dromedaries to tell the Jews that they might stand up for their lives, and destroy any enemies who rose up against them.