_Lying on a pallet of skins near the cliff’s verge, DAVID tosses feverishly. Three of his followers and a lad, who serves him, are gathered toward the front, ragged, hungry, and hunted, in altercation over a barley-cake._ DAVID Water! the fever fills me, and I thirst. Water! FIRST FOLLOWER Listen. SECOND FOLLOWER He calls. DAVID Water! I thirst. THE LAD Yes, yes, my lord. [_Takes up a water-skin._] Ah, empty, not a quaff! They’ve drunk it all from him! My lord, none’s left. I’ll run and in the valley brim it soon. [_He goes._ DAVID _sinks back_.] SECOND FOLLOWER [_To_ FIRST.] _You_ drank it then. FIRST FOLLOWER And should I thirst, not he? Give me the bread. SECOND FOLLOWER If it would strangle you. FIRST FOLLOWER I’ll have it. SECOND FOLLOWER Or betray him? spitingly? It is the last. Already you have eat. And we are here within a wilderness. FIRST FOLLOWER Be it, but I’ll not starve. THIRD FOLLOWER He utters right. Why should we but to follow a mere shepherd Famish and o’er a hundred desert hills? The prophecy portending him the throne-- Folly, not fate! though it is Samuel’s. I’ll trust in it no more. FIRST FOLLOWER Nor I. THIRD FOLLOWER And Saul Has driven us from waste to waste--pressed us Even unto the Philistines for shelter, And now unto this crag. And is not David’s Thought but of Michal, not of smiting him And, with a host, of leaping to the kingdom? [DAVID _stirs to rise_.] FIRST FOLLOWER He moves; peace! THIRD FOLLOWER Let him. SECOND FOLLOWER Peace. THIRD FOLLOWER And fawning too? DAVID [Sufferingly] Men--men, we must have news. Perpetual, Implacable they stare unto each other. This rock and stony sky. [_Rises and comes down to them._] We must have news. [_They are silent._] Longer is death. ’Tis overmany days Of sighing and remembered verdancy; Nor any dew or upward odor comes. Who will go now and bring us word of Saul? THIRD FOLLOWER Have not Abishai, Abiathar, And others gone? DAVID Bravely. THIRD FOLLOWER And none returned! DAVID Not one of all. THIRD FOLLOWER Well, then, we are not swine, And life’s but once. DAVID So----? THIRD FOLLOWER We will follow you No longer hungered and rewarded never, But perilously ever. DAVID It is well. [_He looses a bracelet from his arm._]