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 have fallen upon my lord and upon me. After David's son died, he straightway rose up, eat and drank, and went in unto Bathsheba the whore; and she, the wife of Uriah, whom he had murdered, submitted to be comforted by him. When Saul heard the words of Samuel, he fell straightway in the darkness all along on the earth, and there was no strength in him, for he had eaten no bread all the day nor all the night. The woman offered him bread, but he sat on the bed and would not eat. At last, as the morning was breaking, he consented to eat, and he went away to make ready for the fight. He was assured he would perish that day, and that before the sun set he would be in Sheol with Samuel, bat he did not play the coward and nee. He fought as the king he was, but the Philistines were too many for him; the curse from the Lord was upon the Israelites, so that they feared and fled. Jonathan, with Abinadab and Melchishua, his brothers, were around Saul to the last, but they were slain. The men-at-arms dared not come near Saul, but the archers pressed him sorely from afar, and he could not close with them, and he saw his end was at hand. He would not have the Philistines take him alive, wounded for sport, even if they might spare his life; and he therefore prayed his armour-bearer to thrust him through, but his armour-bearer would not. Thereupon Saul took his sword, and fell upon it; and his armour-bearer fell likewise upon his sword, and died with him. The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his sons dead on Gilboa, and carried off their bodies, shamefully using them. But though the alarm at the victory was great, there were men in Israel who dared do anything for their master, the men of Jabesh-gilead, who remembered what Saul had done for them against the Ammonites; and they went by night and rescued the bodies, and burnt them, and buried them under this tree in Jabesh, whence they afterwards came to Zelah, where I shall lie.