CHAPTER XII. _The Woe of the Prophet._ "What now?" Jeremiah asked himself. Without an idea as to what his next move should be or where he should now turn, he took the road leading to Anathoth. A day and a night in the stocks and the smarting lashes at Pashhur's hands, had given him a taste of martyrdom, and left him sick of heart and soul. He wanted to go home! Yes, he would go home where he would find, among his relatives and those dear to him, the shelter and comfort and rest that he longed for so much. His heart yearned for love and his soul for peace. He turned northward. Head bent, spirit crushed, wounded in mind and in body, he approached the town of his birth, where he had spent the happy days of his youth, where he had received his call to prophesy, that ended now in humiliation and disgrace. The painful, bitter thoughts that passed through his mind were suddenly disturbed by the noise of someone running toward him and calling his name. Jeremiah looked up to see young Baruch, all out of breath, coming toward him, both his arms waving in the air as if giving a warning. "Flee, master, flee!" Baruch cried, looking back in fear lest some one was pursuing him or would overhear him. "Baruch!" exclaimed Jeremiah, stretching out his arms in welcome. The sight of the young man was the first moment of joy he had had since his encounter with Pashhur. Baruch did not hear the joyous note in his master's greeting. His face was pale and he was trembling from head to foot. Mechanically he ran into Jeremiah's embrace, but did not return it. Facing Anathoth and pointing toward it, he whispered, rapidly, "They have devised devices against thee, saying, 'Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof; let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.'" Jeremiah finally succeeded in calming Baruch and drew out of him the fact that his cousins had conspired to kill him, and that, to save himself, he must not enter Anathoth. Jeremiah's family had been poor but respectable citizens of Anathoth for many generations. They traced their ancestry back to Eli and to the high priest, Abiathar, who served in the Temple during the time of David, but whom Solomon banished to the suburb. His relatives had always looked upon Jeremiah as the black sheep of the family. Now, in addition to their poverty, he had cast ridicule upon them by his actions, and contempt by his punishment in the stocks. So they decided to put him out of the way and be rid of him, once for all. By this time the two men had reached the gray, barren hillside from which the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea can be seen in the distance. It was here where Jeremiah received his call and commission to be a prophet to his people. With deep emotion did he now bewail his lot: "Ah! I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter and I knew it not."