“_My roots are in their dust, My roots are deep, I trust...._” And Jonah wept, with his head against his mother’s breast. “_My son is at my knee._” XIII Naaman sat beneath his acacia tree. Gentle and austere, his thoughts usually concerned themselves with the universe and with God, who he did not believe belonged exclusively to the Jews. However, he no longer felt called upon to say so, unless he was asked; then he stated his opinions with dignity but without the least hope of convincing any one. When any one wished to know why he, who loved peace, clung to such disturbing ideas, he replied, “I am an old man, and I like to have in my mind only what is comfortable there.” Now, however, his brows were drawn in a frown, and he looked gloomily at Jonah, who sat with bent head at his feet. And his hands, as he caressed his long white beard, trembled with age, with pity, and with indignation. “So, my son,” he said, “you have hurt yourself. When you were a child you used to come running to me with eyes full of tears, to show me some bruise you had received. I can still remember what I used to tell you: if you did not fall you would not get a bump. The one followed the other, almost as to make one believe that they were the same thing. And so I used to ask you: Jonah, are you crying because of the fall or the bump? Well, my son?” Jonah smiled sadly. “Yes,” he replied. “And then you went on to say that I was not a philosopher. How that used to wound me, for I wished above all things to be a philosopher. “Well, now it is the bump that has made me cry, Naaman.” Naaman nodded his head. “Exactly,” he said. “But do you think perhaps you are any more of a philosopher than you were then? I doubt it, my son. For you bring me your bruise with the same astonishment as of old, not seeing that, having fallen, you can expect nothing else.” Jonah spread out his hands in a gesture of discouragement. “How is one to stand upright in this world then, Naaman,” he said, “being but a man, and less than a god.” The old hermit regarded him gravely. “You are not a man, Jonah,” he said finally; “although,” he added quickly, “you are not a god, either. But you are not a man in the sense that your brother Aaron is a man. Nor do you live in the world he lives in. You belong to another world altogether, as different from that one as Thebes from Nineveh. “And that world, my son, where you belong, is not here, among the tribes, among the towns and villages. It is in the desert; it is in the wilderness, where there is quiet for God to speak, where there is room for His angels to move about. When you left Golan, your heart was like the desert, spacious and calm. But now it is like a crowded village, full of tumult and pain.” “Yes,” said Jonah in a low voice, “it is full of pain.” “I hoped you would not stay here,” continued Naaman; “I implored you to return to Golan, to your home. Yet you stayed; with the result it was impossible not to foresee.”