In the thicket of the wood was that ram which God created at dusk on the sixth day, that it might serve this purpose. An angel had brought it out of Paradise, where it had lived since its creation, and had fed under the shadow of the Tree of Life, and had drunk of the River that there flows. And when the ram was brought into this earth, all the earth was filled with the fragrance from its fleece, on which hung the odours of the flowers on which it had lain in Paradise. But by Satan’s fraud, the animal was frightened and strayed away, and Abraham tracked it by its foot-prints. Then Satan decoyed the beast behind some bushes and entangled its horns in the thicket; and Abraham would have passed by, and not seen it, but the ram caught him by his cloak. So Abraham slew it, and offered it in sacrifice, and sprinkled with its blood the altar he had made. Now the Last Trumpets that shall sound, the one to call the just, the other the unjust, are made of the horns of this wondrous ram. 11. THE DEATH OF SARAH. Sarah,—who, as we have seen, accompanied Abraham and Isaac part of the way to Moriah,—on her return to the tent, found an old man awaiting her. It was Satan. He greeted her with profound respect, and asked after her husband and son. She answered that they had gone forth on a journey. “Whither have they gone?” asked Satan. “My lord has gone to visit the school of Shem and Eber, our grandsires, there to leave my son Isaac to be instructed in the law of God.” “Alas! alas!” exclaimed the Apostate Angel; “thou art greatly deceived.” Sarah was alarmed; and she asked wherefore he spake thus. “Know then,” said Satan, “that Abraham has gone forth with Isaac to sacrifice him, upon a mountain, to the Most High.” When she heard this, Sarah laid her head on the bosom of a slave, and fainted. When she came to herself she hurried with her maidens to the school of Shem and Eber, and inquired after her husband and son, but they had neither seen nor heard anything of them. So Sarah was convinced that what had been told her was true, and there was no spirit left in her. Now when Satan knew that Abraham was bringing back his son, and that God had accepted the will for the deed, he was moved with envy and spite, and he could not rest to think of the joy that this would cause; so he went hastily to Sarah, and she was weeping in her tent, and sorely cast down and broken in spirit. Then he said suddenly to her, “Thy son liveth and is returning. God hath spared him!” And she rose up and uttered a cry, and fell, and was dead; for the joy had killed her. Abraham and Isaac in the meantime had returned from Moriah, and they sought Sarah at Beer-sheba, but she was not there; therefore they went to Hebron, and there they found her corpse. Isaac fell weeping upon the face of his mother, and he cried, “Mother, mother! why hast thou forsaken me? why hast thou gone away?”