As the King was walking upon the battlements one day, "a woman cried out, saying, Help, my lord, O King! And the King said, What aileth thee?
and she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow.

So we boiled my son, and did eat him; and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son that we may eat him; and she hath hid her son." The prophet Elisha declared that within four and twenty hours the prices of food should go down to nothing, almost, and it was so.

The Syrian army broke camp and fled, for some cause or other, the famine was relieved from without, and many a shoddy speculator in dove's dung and ass's meat was ruined.
We were glad to leave this hot and dusty old village and hurry on.

At two o'clock we stopped to lunch and rest at ancient Shechem, between the historic Mounts of Gerizim and Ebal, where in the old times the books of the law, the curses and the blessings, were read from the heights to the Jewish multitudes below..