The ark and the coffer were placed on a cart, and two milch-kine were yoked to draw it. A doubt still lingered in the minds of the Philistines whether the God who had allowed his people to be conquered and his dwelling-place to be captured could really, after all, have been the author of the plague, and they watched, therefore, to see whether the kine took the road towards Israelitish territory or back to their own young. But all doubt vanished when the kine marched straight eastward towards Beth-shemesh, lowing as they went. The villagers were in the fields reaping when they saw the cart coming towards them, laden with its precious freight. The kine stood still at last by the side of a great stone—the stone of Abel ‘in the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite.’ Then the Levites came and took the ark and the offerings from the cart and laid them on the stone, which thus became a sanctuary and an altar. The wood of the cart was broken into firewood, and the kine were repaid for the gift they had brought by being sacrificed to the Lord. But the plague followed the ark even upon Israelitish soil. The men of Beth-shemesh believed that it was because they had looked into the sacred shrine of Yahveh, to see, possibly, whether its original contents were still within it, and in their terror they begged the inhabitants of Kirjath-jearim to come and carry it away. To Kirjath-jearim accordingly it was removed and placed in the house of Abinadab, whose son Eleazar was consecrated to look after it. That it was not carried to Shiloh is a sign that the destruction of Shiloh had already taken place. With the removal of the ark to Kirjath-jearim darkness falls on the history of Israel. There was little for the patriotic historian to record. The people were in servitude to the Philistines, the national sanctuary had been destroyed, the ark itself was hidden away in a private house. When the curtain is again lifted, it is to chronicle a local success over the Philistine foe. Samuel is at Mizpeh, ‘the watch-tower,’ which must have adjoined Ramah, if indeed it was not the name of one of its two quarters.[398] Here was the last refuge of the few Israelites who still refused to acknowledge the Philistine rule, and the surrounding mountains afforded a home and shelter to the bands of outlaws who still carried on a guerilla warfare with the foreigner. One of the incidents of this warfare was long remembered. While Samuel was sacrificing a lamb as a burnt-offering to Yahveh, the Philistines fell upon the assembled people. But a sudden thunderstorm dismayed the assailants, who fled down the valley towards Beth-car pursued by the inhabitants of Mizpeh. It was in memory of the victory that Eben-ezer, ‘the stone of help,’ was set up by the seer between Mizpeh and Shen.[399]