Nabal’s men were eating and drinking, as Abigail came home, sitting at a feast fit for a king. Nabal was drunken, and merry with the foolish merriment of drink. So she told him nothing, either less or more, until the morning light.
Then she said, “Nabal, yesterday your life was in great danger, and I saved you. David was on his way here with four hundred men, and I met him and turned him back.”
And Nabal was so filled with terror that his heart, for the moment, ceased to beat: as if he had been walking in his sleep and had waked to find himself on the very edge of a steep cliff. And his fright and the liquor he had drunk brought on a sudden sickness. He went to bed, and never got up again: and in ten days he was dead.
Now David’s wife, the princess Michal, had been taken from him by the king and married to another man. And, anyhow, it was then the custom for men to have more wives than one. So when the tidings of the death of Nabal came to David, his heart turned toward the brave and beautiful lady who had stopped him on the road. And again a band of messengers from David approached the house which had once been Nabal’s, but this time they asked in David’s name not for bread and meat, but for the hand of Abigail. And Abigail, remembering the grace and courtesy of the bold outlaw, consented.
XXXVIII
THE ADVENTURE OF THE KING’S SPEAR
HEREVER King Saul went he carried his tall spear. When he sat at the table, he had it close beside him, as his son Jonathan knew by sad experience. He even took it with him when he went to bed, leaning it against the wall beside his pillow as he slept. Of course, then, when he went to capture David he bore his spear over his shoulder. Thus he set out, and three thousand men with him.
Word had come to the king that David was hiding in a certain place. Men came one day from a place called Ziph, and said to Saul, “O king, David has hid himself in the hill of Hachilah. Come quick, and catch him.”
For the men of Ziph, like a great many other quiet people, were much afraid of David. Indeed, we may well believe that while lion-killers and giant-slayers are very pleasant persons to meet in the pages of books, a band of five or six hundred of them might be objectionable neighbors. Nabal was not the only sheepmaster who wished that they were all in Jericho, or in some other remote place on the other side of the river Jordan. So the men of Ziph did their best to get rid of them. “Now is the time,” they said, “to capture David. He and his men are hiding in the hill of Hachilah.”
So Saul set forth, with his three thousand, and to the hill of Hachilah they came. And being tired after their long march, the first thing that they did was to pitch their camp on the side of the hill. Then they laid them down and went to sleep, for it was dark. Saul had five times as many men as David, so nobody was afraid. They did not take even the common precaution of a guard to keep awake and watch. Saul slept, and his uncle Abner the captain slept, and all the soldiers slept, in the shelter of the rocks and under the thick bushes. And the moon came out and looked upon Saul’s camp, and there they lay, all the three thousand, sound asleep, while a single spark of light reflected from the sky shone on the tip of the spear which showed where the king lay beneath.