and this stripling, the youngest of them all, had been blessed by the prophet and anointed with the holy oil. And he had been filled with envy when he heard that David had been summoned to the court by the king.

‘Who bade thee come idling here,’ he said, ‘leaving thy poor little flock of sheep with some herd-boy in the wilds? Oh, but I know thee of old, thy pride and presumption and the naughtiness of thy heart. Thou art puffed up with self-will, and it is not to bring a message from our father that thou hast come into the camp, but to see the fighting.’

But David answered him, ‘What is it I have done amiss? I did but ask a question, and thou canst not deny it is one that needs an answer.’

He turned away from his brother, and continued to question those who stood near, and one and all gave him the answer that had been given him already.

‘But look now,’ he adjured them earnestly, ‘this boaster, monster though he be, is but a man. Weighed down with brass he moves as clumsily as an ox, and his face at least is naked. Why is he allowed to live, defying Jehovah?’

Seeing at length, though he was still little more than a boy, that David’s scorn of the champion of the Philistines and his shame for Israel sprang from the courage of his very soul, these men reported the matter to their captain, who himself questioned David, and brought him to the tent of the king.

David stood beside Saul’s standard while the captain went within. Then the captain led him into the tent where Saul sat, with Abner and his chief officers in attendance upon him; and David stood before the king. He bowed himself before Saul, and being questioned, said simply what was in his mind. He told the king why he had come into the camp, and how he had chanced to hear the champion of the Philistines shout his challenge against Israel, and that he had spoken only as his own soul had declared.

‘Why,’ he said, ‘should any heart in Israel be faint with fear because of this man, this enemy of the Lord? Thy servant would himself go out and fight with the Philistine.’

The king looked on him and marvelled, questioning within himself where he had seen his face before. But there came back no clear remembrance of the shepherd-boy who had sat beside him as he lay sick, and had solaced the dread and horror in his mind with the music of his harp.

‘Of a truth,’ he said, ‘there is no doubt of thy valour. But what hope hast thou of prevailing against him? Thou art but a youth and hast had no experience in arms, while this Goliath hath been a man of war from the day when he was first able to carry a spear. He would disdain thee, my son, and snap thee in twain betwixt his fingers.’

But David pleaded with the king. He said how in days gone by, when he had sat keeping his father’s sheep alone in the wild, at one time a bear and at another a young lion had sprung out from its ambush in the rocks and thickets near by, and had seized and carried off a lamb from his flock.

‘So I went out after him,’ he said, ‘and chased him, and snatched his prey from out of his mouth. And when, raging with fury, he sprang upon me, his paws upon my shoulders, I caught him, like this, by the beard upon his chin, and with my club smote and slew him at a blow. So indeed, my lord, thy servant killed both the lion and the bear, and so will I do unto this accursed Philistine, for I vow, my lord, I have no fear of him, seeing that he hath defied the armies of the living God, and is himself no better than a ravening beast. The Lord God who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from this Philistine also!’

Watching David close as he stood before him, and marking how his face was lit up and transfigured with the faith and courage of the spirit within him, Saul consented at length to let him go. He glanced


  By PanEris using Melati.

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