And he went home again. As he entered his yard, a green beetle crossed his path. He went a few steps out of his way in order to tread upon it. XIV And so Jonah returned to the desert, to his hut among the rushes in Golan. As he stood waiting for the ferry to take him across the Jordan, a party of soldiers coming from Hamath passed him on their way home. “There is Jonah,” they said, “the prophet. Now we shall have another war.” “That is the sort of prophet to have.” “Hurrah for Jonah.” But Jonah paid no attention to them. He was thin and deathly tired, and his eyes, which burned with a deep and weary fire, were fixed on the distant hills beyond the river. There, Naaman had said, he would have peace again. He walked northward through Tob, climbing from the river valley toward the table-land behind the hills. His heart was heavy, so heavy it seemed to weigh him down; and he walked slowly. At dusk he found himself still far from Golan, with a river yet to cross, and near the little pool at which he had halted on his way to Bethel, months before. How different life had seemed to him then. Why, it was not the same thing at all any longer; now it seemed like a dream, without reality, without anything about it that he could feel. He sank down and looked around him. The night came on. The shrill frogs sang together; and the little fox came out of his hole, and lay down beside Jonah, whom he recognized. “Ah,” he remarked, as he settled himself comfortably at his side, “here is the man of God again.” Jonah let his hand stroke the fox’s soft fur. His face was turned to the west, and he peered back through the darkness over the way he had come, as though trying to see again the home he had left. Uncle David, Aaron--his mother.... He remembered how she had pressed him to her breast as he departed. “Go, my son,” she had said, “go back to God. He misses you. Here is a little cake for the journey, and a few silver pieces. They are all I have. Buy yourself a coat on the way.” She had sold her shawl to give him a coat. But he left the silver pieces in a pot before the oven. He wanted nothing, only to forget the sickness of his heart, the heaviness like a weight of lead in his breast. “Cheer up,” she had said at the last; “see, you will forget all this after a while. There is the storm, and then the sun shines. Do not stay away too long. Who knows, maybe God will send you home again soon.” And she had kissed him. No, he would not forget all this soon. Would he ever forget it? that was what he wondered. And Judith, with her brown eyes, and the scent of lilies and jasmine in the moonlight.... “O Judith, Judith, how could you do such a thing to me?” His eyes filled with tears, and he bowed his head. The fox stirred beneath his hand. “Well, Jonah,” he said sadly, “God is a raven. I believe that now, since a jackal ate my wife. He could not very well be a fox, and allow such things; or even an old man with a beard.”