They returned and bore this information to King Solomon, who ordered them to disguise themselves and travel as before, with positive instructions to find the ruffians and with as positive assurance that, if they did not, they twelve should he deemed the murderers, and suffer severely for the crime committed.

They travelled as before, and after fifteen days of weary travel and hardships, one of the brethren, being more weary than the rest, sat down on the brow of a hill, west of Mount Moriah, to rest and refresh himself, and, on attempting to rise, caught hold

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of an acacia, which easily giving way, excited his curiosity: upon examination they found it to be a grave.

About this time a party arrived with the ruffians, and related that while sitting down to rest and refresh themselves, they heard the following horrid exclamations from the clefts of an adjacent rock.

The first was the voice of Jubela, exclaiming:

“Oh! that my throat had been cut across,” &c., &c.

The second was the voice of Jubelo, exclaiming:

“Oh! that my body had been cut in two,” &c., &c.

The third was the voice of Jubelum, exclaiming:

“Oh! that my body had been cut in two,” &c., &c.

Upon which they rushed in, seized, bound, and brought them before King Solomon; who, after a due conviction of their guilt, ordered them to be taken without the gates of the courts of the Temple, and executed according to the several imprecations upon their own heads.

King Solomon then ordered the twelve Fellow Crafts to go in search of the body, and, if found, to observe whether the Master’s word, or a key to it, or any thing appertaining to the Master’s Degree, was on or about it.

The body of our Grand Master, Hiram Abiff, was found in a westerly course from the Temple, where our weary brothers sat down to rest and refresh themselves.

On removal of the earth, they came to the body of our Grand Master, Hiram Abiff, which they found in a high state of putrefaction, and in a mutilated and mangled condition, it having been buried already fifteen days: the effluvia which arose from it compelled them to place involuntarily their hands thus (Master here places his hands in form of a duegard of a Master Mason, which alludes to the manner in which his hands were placed when he took the oath of a Master Mason), to guard their nostrils–but nothing was found on or about the body excepting the jewel of his office, by which his body was easily discovered.1

King Solomon then ordered them to go and assist in raising the body; and it was agreed between him and Hiram, king of Tyre, that as the Master’s word was then lost, the first sigh given at the grave, and the first word spoken after the body should be raised, should be used for the regulation of all Masters’

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[paragraph continues] Lodges, until future generations should find out the right one.

They repaired to the grave, when King Solomon ordered one of the Fellow Crafts to take the body by the Entered Apprentice grip, and see if it could be raised; but, on account of its high state of decomposition, it could not be raised–the flesh cleaved from the bone.

King Solomon then ordered them to take it by the Fellow Craft grip; but on trial, for the reason before given, the Fellow Craft’s grip failed to benefit any–it could not be raised.

King Solomon then exclaimed:

“O Lord my God, I fear the Master’s word is forever lost! My brother of Tyre, what shall we do? Let us pray.”

After prayer, King Solomon took the body by the strong grip of a Master Mason, or lion’s paw, and raised it on the five points of fellowship, which have been explained to you. The body was then carried to the Temple for a more decent burial, and was interred in due form.

The body of our Grand Master was buried three times: first, in the rubbish of the Temple; secondly, on the brow of a hill west of Mount Moriah; and, thirdly and lastly, as near the “Sanctum Sanctorum, or Holy of Holies,” of King Solomon’s Temple, as the Jewish law would permit; and Masonic tradition informs us that there was erected to his memory a Masonic monument, consisting of “a beautiful virgin, weeping over a broken column; before her was a book open; in her right hand a sprig of acacia, in her left an urn; behind her stands Time, unfolding and counting the, ringlets of her hair.”

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