Then he flung the bone out of his hand, and from that day this valley was called Ramath-lehi, which means, Place of the Jaw-bone.

It was now high noon; the air of the rock-strewn waste in which he sat alone shimmered with heat like molten glass, and buzzed with the low drone of flies. The sun beat down upon his head, its only shield the close-braided locks of his thick hair. His pulses throbbed. He was parched and stricken with thirst and near fainting, and he wandered to and fro among the barren rocks, scarcely able to see by reason of the blinding dazzle of the sun and his own weariness. It seemed that in the midst of his triumph he would perish miserably for want of but a sip of water. And in his agony he prayed to the Lord to deliver him.

‘Thou hast given thy servant this great victory,’ he groaned, ‘shall he now die of thirst, and his body fall into the hands of thine enemies!’

The Lord answered his prayer, and lo, from out of a cloven hollow in the rock there gushed water in a clear cold stream. Samson knelt down in the hollow, and cupped his hands and drank, and drank again. He was refreshed and revived and his spirit returned to him. To this place was given a name which means, Hidden Well-spring of Prayer; and though three thousand winters have come and gone, its waters flow in Lehi to this day.

The years went by, and Samson was chosen to be judge or chieftain over the region of Israel where he dwelt. Now there was peace between his own people and the Philistines, and now war. But so long as he lived, there was never a time when his foes were not secretly conniving to seize or ensnare him and to avenge themselves for the shame and evil he had done against them. But he defied them and they dared not attack him openly.

There came a day when Samson went down even to the great walled city of Gaza, and alone. Now this Gaza was one of the oldest cities in the world. It lay furthest south of the five chief cities of Philistia—a long day’s journey from Samson’s hills. Amid its wide-spread gardens of palm and olive it stood upon a hill two miles east of the Great Sea, and was on the coastal highway of the caravans from Tyre and Sidon and Damascus journeying down to Egypt. Muffled in the cloak he wore, Samson entered in by the great gate of the city a little before nightfall, and he went into the house of a woman that lived there. At the usual hour appointed by the governor of the city the gates were shut and strongly barred and bolted. But unknown to Samson, one who stood idling at the gates, and who had cause to remember him, had seen him knock, and enter the house of the woman, and had recognized him.

He followed on after him, and setting another man of Gaza to keep watch on the house, he himself hastened with his news to the governor of the city, who debated how he might take Samson alive or kill him. Seeing that it was now night, and there was no risk of his escaping out of the city while the gates were shut, they determined to wait until day-break and to kill him then, for any attempt to seize him at close quarters in the darkness would be at a heavy cost.

But Samson remained in the house of the woman for but a few hours. At midnight, when all was still and the streets deserted, he rose, and bidding her farewell stole out cautiously into the darkness. He peered this way and that; there was no light showing and naught stirring, yet, like a lion that snuffs at a snare, his mind was filled with a vague mistrust; and he turned swiftly and passed on until he came to the city gates. And when he reached them, behold, they were stoutly barred and bolted against him. He stayed a moment, glancing about him and listening, for it seemed the sound of a footfall some paces behind him had of a sudden ceased.

At this he smiled within himself, and even while the watchman in the tower above—so smitten with terror at sight of him that he dared not challenge him or sound the alarm—stared down from his niche in the wall, Samson seized the great doors of the gate and lurching now this way, now that, wrenched both them and their timber-posts out of the thick masonry of the tower, and heaving them up on to his shoulders—posts, bar, locks and all—he set out into the open country and carried them off to the top of a hill. There