wasso mikali was a very wise man. he questioned nikka closely concerning our situation, and this was his verdict:

"when you fight with thieves you must use thieves' tricks. you did right to come to me. now i will secure fitting garments for you, my sister's son, and for your amerikansky friend, jakka. for him also i will brew a dye of walnut bark and chestnut leaves that will make him as dark as our people, so that men will not turn and stare at him on the road.

"after that i think we had best go away from this place as soon as possible. you have traveled rapidly and shaken off your enemies' pursuit. it is well to take every advantage of an opportunity. moreover, we must go across the rhodopes to the place where the tribe have hidden some horses we got from a roumanian boyar. we will collect the horses, together with some of my young men who can handle a knife, and go on to stamboul. all men go to stamboul, and who will notice a tzigane band?"

"but it was not my thought that you should abandon the affairs of the tribe, and come and fight with me," remonstrated nikka.

"are you not the son of my sister?" rejoined the old gypsy. "if you had not elected to go to buda with your violin would you not be chief of the band? do i not stand in your place? well, then, light of my eyes, we will do for you all that we may."

and he produced a battered silver tobacco box, and rolled himself a cigarette, sitting back on his haunches with the lithe grace of a cat. nikka flung me a proud glance as he translated the pledge.

"it's all right," i admitted with due humility. "and i was all wrong, but i didn't know the middle ages were still with us."

nikka laughingly repeated my remark, and his uncle's twinkling eyes and mocking smile conveyed his retort before it was translated:

"say to my young friend jakka that if a tribe cannot stand by their own then these days are worse than the old times."

with that he left us, and nikka and i secured another hour's sleep. when he returned he was accompanied by a younger edition of himself, who carried two bundles which were disclosed as complete suits of tzigane dress. he, himself, carried a pot of warm, brown liquid, and he proceeded to apply the stain to me with a small paintbrush. hair, mustache, face and body were darkened to a mellow brown. the stuff dried quickly, and i was soon able to pull on the strange garments, which nikka showed me how to adjust and fasten.

i could not help laughing at my reflection in the mirror of the cheap french bureau de toilette. the tight trousers, the short jacket and the big turban increased my height, and the gaudy colors of turban and waist-sash gave me a bizarre appearance that was startlingly unfamiliar. i felt uncomfortable, as though i had dressed for a fancy-dress ball, and overdone the part. but there was none of this effect in nikka's get-up. with the donning of his gypsy costume he discarded his last visible link with the west. he looked the gypsy, the oriental, a kingly vagabond.

"you belong," i said. "but i feel like an imposter."

"you'll grow used to it," he answered, folding in the ends of his sash. "did they give you a knife?" i exhibited the horn-handled, eight-inch blade, with its sheath hooked to a leather belt that encircled my waist beneath the sash. "good! got your automatic and spare clips?"

"and these clothes?"

i pointed to the civilized garments we had discarded.

"kostabidjian will send them on to constantinople in a few days." he sighed. "personally, jack, i don't care if i never wear them again. i can earn a thousand dollars an hour with my fiddle, but what's it worth compared with this? rawhide on your feet that flexes with your soles; clothing that covers you, but doesn't bind; and the open road ahead! civilization is a fraud, jack. i was a fool ever to quit the gypsy life.'

"well, you're back in it again," i replied, "and perhaps you'll be feeling you were a fool to return to it. i know i feel like a fool. let's go."

it was still dark when we left the house. kostabidjian and his servant were awaiting us in the courtyard. they had saddled two horses, and a mule was loaded with bulky packs, food, and blankets, tarpaulins and several cooking utensils. the armenian kept himself in the background. he seemed in deadly fear of wasso mikali, who treated him as though he was a cur to be kicked into the gutter if he interfered. and indeed, there was something singularly imposing about the old tzigane, who strode around with the air of one used to taking as he desired and giving as he pleased.

but just as we were leaving, the dumb servant having swung open the outer door, kostabidjian mustered sufficient courage to press to nikka's side.

"everything was satisfactory?" he inquired timidly. "i have served—"

"well enough," returned nikka, swinging into the saddle of one of the horses, "except that you talk too much. guard your tongue if you would keep it. your servant there—"

he shrugged significantly. even by the starlight i could see the pallor that blanched the armenian's face. he took the threat in sober earnest.

"you shall have no cause to blame! all shall be as you wish. i will remit the charges for the last distribution. take your horse, monseigneur, both horses—the mule! take all!"

nikka gave him a single look, and he subsided.

"heidi, jakka!" called wasso mikali.

"mount, jack," added nikka. "the other horse is for you. we must hasten. my uncle does not like to be seen entering or leaving the town."

we rode out in single-file, first wasso mikali, then nikka, then myself, last the young tzigane, leading the pack-mule. the gypsies set a pace that made the horses trot to keep up with them, a long, slack-kneed shamble, ungainly in appearance, but tremendously effective. by sunrise we had left the town behind the first mountain-ridge, and were heading north towards the waste of mountains that fringed the bulgarian frontier. hour after hour we plodded along. more than once i suggested a rest, for i knew our escorts had been afoot all night. but they would not hear of it. neither would they consent to sharing the horses with us turn-about, and in this nikka upheld them.

"our feet are soft," he pointed out. "we could never maintain such a speed, and it is best to put as long a distance as possible between us and seres, lest our trailers should pick up the scent."

during the early part of the day we passed frequent villages, melancholy collections of hovels that had been scorched by the awful visitation of wars the balkans had known for a decade. but in the afternoon we departed from the main road, and struck off across the hills. occasionally we saw farmhouses or sheepfolds, but when night came we made camp in a lonely ravine with the stars for roof. there was not a light on the horizon, not even the barking of dogs to indicate a human habitation.

the next day it was practically the same. the trail we followed was a mere trace that sometimes disappeared. toward evening we entered a vast forest, and finally halted on the banks of a stream where a campfire blazed. against the flames showed gaunt, turbanned figures.

"are these our friends?" i asked.

"they are pomaks," said nikka.

he spat contemptuously.

"what—"

"moslems! swine!"

while wasso mikali and the young tzigane, whose name was sacha, made the fire under a bowlder, nikka and i led our tired animals down to the stream to drink. several of the pomaks, dirty, shifty-eyed fellows in the same gaudy raiment that the tziganes affected, lounged up to us. one of them stepped in nikka's path, and nikka promptly kicked him. the man turned like a flash, his knife out, and nikka dropped the bridle he was holding, and closed with him. two of the pomaks jumped for me, knives wheeling.

i did what i had done in the fight in the gunroom, hit out with my fists. the first man i knocked into the water, and the second yelled for help, circling me cautiously the while. nikka, after one click of blades, stabbed his man in the shoulder, and we stood back to back, half a dozen pomaks pelting up from their fire.

"wait," said nikka, as i drew my automatic.

there was a scurry in the shadows, and wasso mikali thrust his way into the group surrounding us. he said nothing, but stood there where they could see him in the firelight, and they muttered together and slunk away, the man nikka had wounded clutching his bloody arm.

"what is your uncle? a justice of the peace?" i inquired facetiously.

"he is wasso mikali," answered nikka, wiping his knife-blade on the grass. "now i feel better, jack. it is still the same. the pomak curs crawl to heel when the gypsy speaks. i wondered if it could be just as in my boyhood, after all that has happened in the world."

"if you ask me," i returned, "i don't believe anything has happened in this world of yours."

"much has happened. but the gypsy is always the same—and so likewise, it seems, is the pomak. god, but it felt good to kick that pig!"

i regarded my friend with a recurrence of that amazement which he had stirred in me several times before. the quiet, self-contained musician, the artist, the efficient subaltern of the foreign legion, the cultured man-about-town had been replaced by an arrogant forest princeling, savagely contemptuous of all but his own kind.

the pomaks gave us a wide birth, and early as we were afoot in the morning, they were off before us; but we heard from them again. we were threading a forest defile, where the pine-trees grew thick to the cliff edges, when we heard a shout overhead, i looked up at a stocky man in a brown uniform, with a round fur cap, emblazoned with a rampant lion. he held a rifle in his hands.

"a bulgarian forester," muttered nikka.

wasso mikali climbed up to the forester's perch, and held a brief conversation with him, at the conclusion of which he dug something bright out of his sash and dropped it in the forester's hand. then he slid down into the ravine again, and we resumed our journey. the pomaks had complained to the forester that we were smuggling rose-water essence, but he readily admitted that we were going the wrong way to be handling such a traffic. the lefa piece in his hand was to salve his conscience for not reporting the stabbing of the pomak by nikka.

as we progressed that day the mountains became wilder and more barren. once we saw a lumber-camp on the lower slope of a ridge we traversed. again, in the early afternoon, i saw what i took to be a castle perched atop of a huge crag miles away across a tumbled mass of peaks. but nikka explained that it was one of those fortified monasteries which kept the fires of learning alight during the gloomy centuries when the turk's rule ran as far as the danube.

the path we followed was eccentric in the extreme. in fact, there was no path. we climbed a succession of gullies and ravines opening out of one another, and at dusk emerged upon a sheltered valley, buried deep between precipitous slopes draped in a virgin covering of conifers, chestnut and beech. a little rivulet foamed down the middle, dammed at the foot by a crude barrier of rocks. horses and mules and a few sheep and goats grazed on the banks. against the mountain-wall on either side were built a number of rough log-shelters, part houses, part caves. children, naked for the most part, played about. women were washing in the brook or tending several open fires. a dozen men were lying or sitting on the ground.

"they don't seem surprised to see us," i commented to nikka, whose brooding eyes were drinking in the picture.

"they know we must be friends," he answered. "else the lookouts down the path would have signaled them we were coming—and we should not have come," he added with a flitting smile.

"do you know this place?"

"as well as—how shall i put it?—as well as hugh knows castle chesby. no, i was not born here. my mother lay on the floor-boards of a caravan-cart in the bukowina. my father was looking for likely ponies to trade with bulgarian officers. but they brought me back here, and here i grew to boyhood. do you see that first hovel on this bank? that was where i was taught to fiddle. and there—"

wasso mikali, striding in front of us, raised his voice in a great shout, and the men by the houses jumped to their feet and crowded toward us. the old gypsy added something in which nikka's name was repeated two or three times, and they cried out in astonishment. in the next moment they were swarming around us, and sinewy hands were clasping ours, rows of white teeth were gleaming in welcoming smiles, and nikka was being greeted with a heart-warming mixture of affection and respect.

once they discovered i could not talk their language they let me alone, but nikka they plied with questions until the women summoned us to the fires for the evening meal. their attitude toward him was extraordinary. he was one of themselves—several were his cousins, most of them were related to him in some remote degree of consanguinity; he had lived amongst them for years. yet to them, as to the rest of the world, he was also the great master, the violinist who could charm multitudes, upon whose bounty, too, they and others like them had been sustained in periods of want.

while the women served us with stew and bread, nikka introduced me to them, and they promptly manifested a naïve interest in my person and career. they all called me jakka. they were amazed to learn that i made my living by drawing plans of houses for people. who, they inquired with frank disbelief, needed to have somebody draw for him the plan of his house? it was absurd. you simply took logs and boards or bricks and stone, if you were in a city, and you put them together. they even insisted upon dragging me away from the fire to the nearest house to illustrate what they meant. they were determined to convince me how superfluous was my profession.

i, in my turn, was surprised by the idyllic security of this retired valley, and i asked them, through nikka, if it had never been penetrated even in wartime. no, they replied, only once a party of franks in pot-hats—by which, it seemed, they meant germans—had come upon it by accident, and of the franks not one had escaped. of course, occasional attempts had been made to drive them out by other outlaw bands; but none had ever succeeded, in consequence of the vigilance of their watch and the tortuous approach through a network of defiles.

their community persisted in defiance of civilization, an anomalous relic of the stone age, of nomad barbarism; and they assured me that here and there all over the balkans other similar gypsy communities still held out, in spite of the havoc of destruction wrought by the war.