Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/321

Rh was held upright to a stout post by an iron ring about the neck and a rope about the waist. He put out a finger and touched the face. It was cold.

"Thy son?"

"They stoned him with these stones. His wife stood by."

"The Syrians?"

"The Syrians. They went northward before noon, taking her. The plain is otherwise burnt than on the day when I sought across it for his sake to Carmel."

"Well did King David entreat the hand of the Lord rather than the hand of man. I had not heard of thy son's marrying."

"Five years ago he went down with a gift to Philistia, to them that sheltered us in the famine. He brought back this woman."

"She betrayed him?"

"He heard her speak with a Syrian, and fled up the hill. From the little window in the wall—see, it smokes yet—she called and pointed after him. And they ran and overtook him. With this iron they fastened him, and with these stones they stoned him. Man of God, I am thinking that God was wiser than thou or I."

The old man stood musing, and touched the heap of stones gently, stone after stone, with the end of his staff.

"He was wiser."