I saw him no more that day, for the tumult was great, and there was much for him to do.  But that evening he came back to me at Gibeah; he, my Saul, came to me as anointed king.  O that night! never to be forgotten, were I to live a thousand years, when I held the king in my arms!  Never—­no, not even on the night when I first became his—­had I known such delight.  I have seen more misery than has fallen to the lot of any woman in this land, and it has not passed over me senseless.  I am not one of those who can go through misfortune untouched, as a drop of oil can rise through water.  I have taken it all in, felt it all, to the last sting there was in it; and yet now, when I call to mind the night after he was crowned, and its rapture of an hour—­the strength and the eagerness of his love:  the strength, the eagerness, and the pride of mine—­I say it is good that I have lived.  The next morning I saw him with his valiant men—­the men whose heart God had touched; how he set them in order, and how they followed him—­him higher than any of them, from the shoulders upwards; and I said to myself, he is mine, the king is mine, that body of his is mine, and I am his.

Tell you all about him?  How can I?  But I will tell you a little—­what I have told you again and again before—­so that you may tell it to your children, and the name of Saul may never be forgotten.

After he was chosen, the children of Belial said, How shall this man save us?  But he held his peace, for he foresaw what was at hand, Nahash the Ammonite came up and encamped against Jabesh-gilead; and when the men of Jabesh-gilead offered to become his slaves if he would but make a covenant with them, he consented, but upon this condition, that they should thrust out their right eyes.  Such thralls had the children of Israel become whom Saul had to save, that Nahash dared to put this upon them in mockery.  They sent messengers to Gibeah, where Saul was—­not to him, but to tell the people there; and Saul heard the message as he drove the herd out of the field after work, for he was still at his farm, his day not yet having come.  When he listened to the story of the men of Jabesh-gilead, the Spirit of God came upon him; and he took a yoke of his oxen and hewed them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the coasts of Israel, saying, Whosoever cometh not after Saul, and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen.  The fear of the Lord fell on the people, such strength was there in Saul’s command, and they came out with one consent.  He numbered his men, divided them into three bands, marched all night from Bezek, fell upon the Ammonites in the morning watch, and so slaughtered and scattered them that two of them were not left together.  Where now were the men of Belial who had mocked him?  The people cried out that they might be brought forth and put to death; but Saul, ever noble and great of heart, forbade it.  “Not a man,” he said, “shall be put to death this day, for to-day the Lord hath wrought salvation in Israel.”