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DAVID AND SAUL
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his physical presence there would assure his anxious soul that the kingdom was not slipping from his grasp.
"It is mine," he muttered as he ascended the steps, "all mine, and none can take it from me!"
He was within reach of the stately chair, his hand reached out to grasp its velvet arm, when he stopped with a low cry. Before his excited, troubled eyes rose a vision, so vivid that it seemed a substance, not a shadow. There, upon his throne, sat a ruddy, clear-eyed youth, his bronze hair falling low upon his shoulders, a smile of calm, confident authority upon his countenance. Around him knelt hosts of Israelites, doing homage as to a sovereign, and thru the room the cry seemed to ring: "Saul has slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands ! ' '
For a moment Saul gazed in speechless dismay. Then, with a cry of rage, he rushed forward, his shaking hands outstretched fiercely, grasping at — nothing! Swiftly as it had come did the vision vanish, and
the king gazed about in dazed bewilderment at the empty room.
"Only a dream!" he murmured, "a foolish fancy — or was it a warning? Was the vision sent to show me my danger?"
Urged on by his smouldering jealousy, it was easy for Saul's naturally superstitious mind to persuade itself that the vision had been a warning sent by a divine hand. All night he brooded upon the matter. With the morning's first light he sent for his son, Jonathan, confiding to him his plan for David's swift doom. But here he encountered determined opposition. In the months that David and Jonathan had spent together in the court, a friendship passing the love of brothers had formed between them.
"Thou art mad, my father!" pleaded Jonathan. "David is thy loyal servant; do not this sin against him, when his works toward thee have been so good. Did he not put his life in his hand to slay the Philistine giant, and the Lord wrought a
SAUL SEES A VISION OF DAVID ON THE THRONE