This he did and a regular surgeon completed an operation which he said had, under the circumstances, been most efficiently performed. Corporal James always said that the medal of honor which the government gave him was worth far more than the arm which he gave the government. In the days of David there came a great famine. Year after year the crops failed and the people starved. At last the priests and soothsayers told David that this doom had fallen upon the nation because of a broken oath. Many centuries before Joshua, one of the great generals of the world, was fighting his way into the Promised Land. He was contending with huge black giant tribes like the Anakim, and against blue-eyed Amorite mountaineers with their war-chariots of iron, whose five kings he was to utterly destroy on that great day when he said in the sight of the host of Israel, "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon and thou Moon in the valley of Ajalon," and the sun stood still and the moon stayed until the people had revenged themselves upon their enemies. He had captured the fortified city of Jericho and had razed it to the ground and laid that terrible curse which was afterward fulfilled on the man who should again lay the foundation and rebuild the city. He had destroyed the city of Ai, little but inhabited by fierce fighters who had hurled back even the numberless hordes of Israel. The terror and the dread of the invaders had spread through the length and breadth of the land. On the slopes of Mount Hermon lived the Hivites. They were not great in war, but like the men of Tyre they asked to be let alone to carry on the trade and commerce in which they were so expert. Not far away from Ai was their chief city of Gibeon and the elders of that city planned to obtain from Joshua safety by stratagem. They sent embassadors whose skin bottles were old and rent and bound up and whose shoes were worn through and clouted and whose garments were old and worn and their provision dry and mouldy. These came to Joshua pretending to be embassadors from a far country who desired to make a league with them. Not knowing that their city was in the very path of his march, Joshua and the princes of the congregation made peace with them. Later on they found that they had been deceived, but the word of the nation had been passed and the sworn peace could not be broken. So it happened from that day that the Gibeonites became hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and lived in peace with the Israelites under their sworn protection. The centuries passed and at last Saul, the first king of Israel, began his reign. In spite of the oath of his forefathers, he slew the Gibeonites and sought to root them out of the land. It was this broken oath that had brought upon the nation the years of famine and suffering. Under the advice of their priests David sent for the remnants of the Gibeonites and asked them what atonement could be made for the cruel and treacherous deed of