skin, moving from place to place, announced to the inhabitants their doom.  None knew who he was or whence he had come; none had ever beheld him before; pale, haggard, travel-stained, he moved before then like a visitant from another sphere; and his lips still framed the fearful words—­“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”  Had the cry fallen on them in the prosperous time, when each year brought its tale of victories, and every nation upon their borders trembled at the approach of their arms, it would probably have been heard with apathy or ridicule, and would have failed to move the heart of the nation.  But coming, as it did, when their glory had declined; when their enemies, having been allowed a breathing space, had taken courage and were acting on the offensive in many quarters; when it was thus perhaps quite within the range of probability that some one of their numerous foes might shortly appear in arms before the place, it struck them with fear and consternation.  The alarm communicated itself from the city to the palace; and his trembling attendants “came and told the king of Nineveh,” who was seated on his royal throne in the great audience-chamber, surrounded by all the pomp and magnificence of his court.  No sooner did he hear, than the heart of the king was touched, like that of his people; and he “arose from his throne, and laid aside his robe from him, and covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes.”  Hastily summoning his nobles, he had a decree framed, and “caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed, nor drink water:  but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God:  yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.”  Then the fast was proclaimed, and the people of Nineveh, fearful of God’s wrath, put on sackcloth “from the greatest of them even to the least of them.”  The joy and merriment, the revelry and feasting of that great city were changed into mourning and lamentation; the sins that had provoked the anger of the Most High ceased; the people humbled themselves; they “turned from their evil way,” and by a repentance, which, if not deep and enduring, was still real and unfeigned, they appeased for the present the Divine wrath.  Vainly the prophet sat without the city, on its eastern side, under his booth woven of boughs, watching, waiting, hoping (apparently) that the doom which he had announced would come, in spite of the people’s repentance.  God was more merciful than man.  He had pity on the “great city,” with its “six score thousand persons that could not discern between their right hand and their left,” and, sparing the penitents, left their town to stand unharmed for more than another century.