But, as it chanced, on board the ship which took me to Port Said from Naples I met a man who knew those people intimately--had been, indeed, for years an inmate of their house--and he assumed the office of my mentor.

I stayed in Cairo, merely because he did, for some weeks, and went with him on the same boat to Jaffa.

He, for some unknown reason--I suspect insanity--did not want me in Jerusalem just then; and, when we landed, spun me a strange yarn of how the people I had thought to visit were exceedingly eccentric and uncertain in their moods; and how it would be best for me to stop in Jaffa until he sent me word that I was sure of welcome.

His story was entirely false, I found out later, a libel on a very hospitable house.

But I believed it at the time, as I did all his statements, having no other means of information on the subject.
So I remained at Jaffa, in a little _gasthaus_ in the German colony, which had the charms of cleanliness and cheapness, and there I might have stayed till now had I awaited the tidings promised by my counsellor.