dly concealed themselves. They had been trained in the schools
which Samuel had established, and were probably teachers of the people
on theological subjects, and hence an antagonistic force to idolatrous
kings. Their great defect in the time of Ahab was timidity. There was
needed some one who under all circumstances would be undaunted, and
would not hesitate to tell the truth even to the king and queen, however
unpleasant it might be. So this rough, fierce, unlettered man of few
words was sent by God, armed with terrible powers.

It was now the rainy season, when rain was confidently expected by the
people throughout Palestine. Yet strangely no rain fell, though sixty
inches were the usual quantity in the course of the year. The streams
from the mountains were dried up; the land, long parched by the summer
sun, became like dust and ashes; the hills presented a blasted and
dreary desolation; the very trees were withered and discolored. At last
even the sheltered brook failed from which Elijah drank, and it became
necessary for the man of God to seek another retreat. The Lord therefore
sent him to the last place in which his enemies would naturally search
for him, even to a city of Phoenicia, where the worship of Baal was the
only religion of the land. As in his tattered and strange apparel he
approached Sarepta, or Zarephath, a town between Tyre and Sidon, worn
out with fatigue, parched with thirst, and overcome with
hunger,--everything around him being depressed and forlorn, the rivers
and brooks showing only beds of stone, the trees and grass withered, the
sky lurid, and of unnatural brightness like that of brass, and the sun
burning and scorching every remnant of vegetation,--he beheld a woman
issuing from the town to gather sticks, in order to cook what she
supposed would be her last meal. To this sad and discouraged woman,
doubtless a worshipper of Baal, the prophet thus spoke: "Fetch me, I
pray you, a little water in a vessel that I may drink;" and as she
turned sympathetically to look upon him, he added, "Bring me, I pray
thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand."

This was no small request to make of a woman who was herself on the
borders of starvation, and of a pagan woman too. But there was a
mysterious affinity between these two suffering souls. A common woman
would not have appreciated the greatness of the beggar and vagrant
before her. Only a discerning and sympathetic woman would have seen in
the tones of hi