es of my feet with a stick,
and one of them would have put his hand into my pocket, but the
chiefest of them rebuked him. Soon after they began to take me out of
the vessel to effect their work, but one of the Turks belonging to the
vessel speaking to them as they were taking me ashore, they let me
alone, wherein I saw the good Hand of God preserving me.... After
this, about three or four days we came to Joppa.'

And there at Joppa (or Jaffa), where Jonah long ago had embarked for
Tarshish, and where Peter on the house-top had had his vision of the
great white sheet, our traveller landed. He proceeded straightway on
what he hoped would have been the last stage of his long journey to
Jerusalem.

Alas! he was mistaken. A few pleasant hours of travel he had, as he
passed through the palm-groves that encircle the city of Jaffa, and
over the first few miles of dusty road that cross the famous Plain of
Sharon. Ever as he journeyed he could see the tall tower of Ramleh,
built by the Crusaders hundreds of years before, growing taller as he
approached, rising in the sunset like a rosy finger to beckon him
across the Plains. When he reached it, in the shadow of the tall Tower
enemies were lurking. Certain friars up at Jerusalem, in the hilly
country that borders the plain, had heard from their brethren at Acre
that a heretic stranger from England was coming on foot to visit the
Holy City. Now these friars, although they called themselves
Franciscans, were no true followers of St. Francis, the 'little poor
man of God,' that gentlest saint and truest lover of holy poverty and
holy peace. These Jerusalem friars had forgotten his teaching, and
lived on the gains they made off pilgrims; therefore, hearing that the
heretic stranger from heretic England was travelling independently and
not on a pilgrimage, they feared that he might spoil their business at
the Holy Shrines. Accordingly they sent word to their brethren, the
friars of Ramleh in the plain, to waylay him and turn him back as soon
as he had reached the first stage of his journey from Jaffa on the
coast.

'The friars of Jerusalem,' says Robinson, 'hearing of my coming, gave
orders unto some there [at Ramleh] to stay me, which accordingly was
done; for I was taken and locked up in a room for one night and part
of the day following, and then had liberty to go into the yard, but as
a prisoner; in which time the Turks showed friendship unto me, one
ancient man especially, of g