What man is he that lusteth to live,
And would fain see good days?
Let him refrain his tongue from evil
And his lips that they speak no guile,
Let him eschew evil and do good,
Let him seek peace and ensue it.'


With such strains as these, sung to his harp, the warrior gained the
hearts of his men to enthusiastic love, and gathered followers on all
sides, among them eleven fierce men of Gad, with faces like lions and
feet swift as roes, who swam the Jordan in time of flood, and fought
their way to him, putting all enemies in the valleys to flight.

But the Eastern sun burnt on the bare rocks. A huge fissure, opening in
the mountain ridge, encumbered at the bottom with broken rocks, with
precipitous banks, scarcely affording a foothold for the wild goats---
such is the spot where, upon a cleft on the steep precipice, still
remain the foundations of the 'hold', or tower, believed to have been
the David's retreat, and near at hand is the low-browed entrance of the
galleried cave alternating between narrow passages and spacious halls,
but all oppressively hot and close. Waste and wild, without a bush or a
tree, in the feverish atmosphere of Palestine, it was a desolate region,
and at length the wanderer's heart fainted in him, as he thought of his
own home, with its rich and lovely terraced slopes, green with wheat,
trellised with vines, and clouded with grey olive, and of the cool
cisterns of living water by the gate of which he loved to sing--


'He shall feed me in a green pasture,