women, and a man of words and of song: treacherous
is he also at times. But he belongs to us; he fears the Lord and His
prophets and priests; he may go a-whoring, but it will not be after
Baal; he will war against the heathen, and will not show mercy to them.
Now I am about to die, and to descend into the darkness whither my
fathers, and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses have gone before me. I
bless the Lord that I have lived, for I have preserved the knowledge of
Him and His Law. My life ends, but the Lord liveth, all honour and
glory to His sacred name.

SAUL.

_Rizpah, the Horite, in her old age, talks of Saul to the wife of
Armoni, her son_.

This is the day on which your husband's father fell on the mountains of
Gilboa. Though I was no Israelite, but born in the desert, I was his
beloved before he became king. I am eighty years old now, but the
blood moves in me, and I grow warm as I think of him. There was not a
goodlier person than he--from his shoulders and upwards he was higher
than any of the people. Why did the Lord choose him? He never coveted
that honour, and he suffered because there was laid on him that which
he did not seek. Yet the Lord was right, for there was not one in all
Israel so royal as he, and it was he who redeemed it and made it a
nation. Samuel had grown old--he was always a priest rather than a
captain--and his sons, whom he made judges, turned aside after lucre,
took bribes, and perverted judgment. The people were weary of their
oppression and the hand of the Amalekites and the Philistines were very
heavy on the land. They therefore prayed for a king, and the thing
displeased Samuel, and he tried to turn them from it. But they refused
to listen to him, and when they came together at Mizpeh, Saul was the
man upon whom the lot fell. Again, I say, he desired not to be king.
He had hidden himself on that day, but he could not be hidden, and he
was dragged forth to glory and to ruin. I was there: I heard the
shouts as they cried God save the king. I saw him no more that day,
for the tumult was great, and there was much for him to do. But that
evening he came back to me at Gibeah; he, my Saul, came to me as
anointed king. O that night! never to be forgotten, were I to live a
thousand years, when I held the king in my arms! Never--no, not even
on the night when I first became his--had I known such delight. I have
seen more misery than has fallen to the lot of any woman