he went to obtain some voice from the unknown world, thinking that by
chance light might shine in upon his despair. But when he came to the
woman, and she asked him what spirit she should call, he could do
nothing but ask for Samuel. He feared him, and yet he desired to see
him. It was always strange to me that he, such a king, should be so
subdued by Samuel's presence. It was so in life, and it was so in
death. The spirit of Samuel rose, and Saul humbled himself before the
shadow. Alas, Samuel had learned no pity through death, and his ghost
was as fierce as the living man of years gone. He had passed into the
land of emptiness and vanity, yet his wrath burnt as if mortal blood
had been in him. Saul bowed unto him and told him his trouble, how he
was sore distressed, for the Philistines made war upon him, and God had
departed from him, and answered him not. It was a dreadful sight, so
the woman herself told me afterwards, a king abasing himself before a
spectre of a priest and craving mercy. The worst foe whom Saul had in
the land would have felt his heart touched, and the wicked woman
herself was moved with great compassion. If success could not be
promised, at least some comfort might have been given, but Samuel was
bitterness itself; terrible he always was to me, so bitter and so hard
that I shuddered at him. He turned upon Saul and denounced him, he,
the dead, denounced him who was about to die, and declared that the
Lord was his enemy. Enemy! for what, because he had spared Agag? And
yet that was, in a measure, the reason; for Saul was too much of a man
for the priest, and therefore the priest set up David against him. The
ghost stood there, and doomed the king. "The Lord," he cried, "hath
rent the kingdom out of thine hand, and given it to thy neighbour, even
to David, because thou obeyedst not the voice of the Lord, nor
executedst His fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the Lord done
this thing unto thee this day. Moreover, the Lord will also deliver
Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines; and to-morrow shalt
thou and thy sons be with me: the Lord also shall deliver the host of
Israel into the hand of the Philistines." For this cause Saul was to
fall, and his three sons, and there was to be a great slaughter of
Israel. When David the adulterer murdered Uriah, was that not a worse
crime, yet was his punishment as Saul's? And what punishment there was
fell not on David as it would