avid's new position. He is removed from court, and put in
a subordinate command, which only extends his popularity, and brings him
into more immediate contact with the mass of the people. "All Israel and
Judah loved David, because he went out and came in before them." Then
follows the offer of Saul's elder daughter in marriage, in the hope that
by playing upon his gratitude and his religious feeling, he might be
urged to some piece of rash bravery that would end him without scandal.
Some new caprice of Saul's, however, leads him to insult David by
breaking his pledge at the last moment, and giving the promised bride to
another. Jonathan's heart was not the only one in Saul's household that
yielded to his spell. The younger Michal had been cherishing his image
in secret, and now tells her love. Her father returns to his original
purpose, with the strange mixture of tenacity and capricious
changefulness that marks his character, and again attempts, by demanding
a grotesquely savage dowry, to secure David's destruction. But that
scheme, too, fails; and he becomes a member of the royal house.

This third stage is marked by Saul's deepening panic hatred, which has
now become a fixed idea. All his attempts have only strengthened David's
position, and he looks on his irresistible advance with a nameless awe.
He calls, with a madman's folly, on Jonathan and on all his servants to
kill him; and then, when his son appeals to him, his old better nature
comes over him, and with a great oath he vows that David shall not be
slain. For a short time David returns to Gibeah, and resumes his former
relations with Saul, but a new victory over the Philistines rouses the
slumbering jealousy. Again the "evil spirit" is upon him, and the great
javelin is flung with blind fury, and sticks quivering in the wall. It
is night, and David flies to his house. A stealthy band of assassins
from the palace surround the house with orders to prevent all egress,
and, by what may be either the strange whim of a madman, or the cynical
shamelessness of a tyrant, to slay him in the open daylight. Michal,
who, though in after time she showed a strain of her father's proud
godlessness, and an utter incapacity of understanding the noblest parts
of her husband's character, seems to have been a true wife in these
early days, discovers, perhaps with a woman's quick eye sharpened by
love, the crouching murderers, and with rapid promptitude urges
immediate flight. Her