But God remembered this noble woman of Shunem, who had shown such kindness to His servant, and, according to the promise, a son was born into the great woman’s home. A ray of sunshine had indeed broken through the parted clouds and entered that home--sunshine such as had never been there before, and such as outshone all her estates. Below the village, stretching away towards the south and east, were the wheatfields, and the child, as children sometimes will, slipped out from under the mothers watchful care, into the field where the reapers were at work. Absorbed in the work of the reapers, neither the father nor the son realized the intense heat pouring down out of a clear sky upon the field at the hottest season of the year. Presently, this child of promise, which had gladdened the hearts of his parents and brought such joy and sunshine to their home, came up to his father and said, “My head, my head.” It was scarcely barley harvest when we crossed this plain with the glare of the sun out of a clear sky shining in our face, and with blood heated and thirsty withal, and the danger of a sun-stroke, we thought of the words of the child, and ever since they have had a new meaning. At once the father directed a lad to carry the child “to his mother,” and when the lad had brought him “he sat on her knees till noon, and then died.” All the mother’s hope turned to ashes, and her joy into grief, made all the more bitter because it was her only child. As she sat in her house with the dead child folded to her bosom, her soul cried out: “What is life?” Though passing fair, it is but as A flower just opened in the sun, And wilted, withered, ere the day is done; A vapor swiftly floating in the sky, That vanished as it caught our eye; A fragrant perfume borne upon the gale, That’s gone before we could its sweets inhale. A bright pinioned warbler but just flitting by Is lost, while we gaze in the depths of the sky; A bud just bursting when the cruel frost Steals all its beauty and its fragrance is lost. Strains of sweet music floating on the air, Soon turned to moans and wailings of despair; A glowing smile while flashing o’er the face, Suddenly to glistening tears give place. The grief-smitten mother carried the body of her precious child into the upper chamber and tenderly laid it on the “bed of the man of God, and shut the door upon it.” Doubtless, for the present, she intended to keep the death of the child from the husband and father. Evidently she cherished the secret hope that the prophet, who had promised her a son in the name of Jehovah, and had not deceived her, could help to restore him. At all events she acted promptly. She called her husband to send a young man out of the field to make ready with all haste to go to Mount Carmel, and when ready she said to the servant, “Drive, and go forward; slack not thy riding for me, except I bid thee.”