h the aid of a white turban
wound over a cone-shaped cap, great horn-rimmed spectacles, and
the comfortable, baggy garments that the un-modernized _hakim_
wears over narrow cotton pantaloons.

Over it all they put a loose, brown Bedouin cloak of camel-hair
such as any man expecting to travel across deserts might invest
in, whatever his nationality; it was hotter than Tophet, but, as
the Arabs say, what keeps the heat in will also keep it out. It
gives you a feeling of carrying your home around with you
on your back, the way a snail totes its shell, and there are
worse sensations.

"Now consider yourself a while in the mirror, sahib," said
Narayan Singh. "When a man knows how he looks he begins to
act accordingly."

Have you ever stopped to think how true that is? There was a
full-length mirror upstairs in de Crespigny's bedroom, left
behind by a German missionary's wife when the Turks and their
friends stampeded, and Narayan Singh watched while I posed in
front of it. Before many minutes, without any deliberately
conscious effort on my part, gesture and attitude were molding
themselves to fit the costume, in somewhat the same way, I
suppose, that a farm-hand from Montenegro shapes himself into a
new American store suit.

"But it is necessary to remember!" warned Narayan Singh. "We
should have done this sooner. There should be a photograph to
carry with you, because a man forgets his own appearance where
there are no mirrors and none others resembling himself.
Henceforward, sahib, sleeping or waking, be a _hakim!_ There is a
chest of medicines downstairs."

By the time I had got down Grim had already changed into Bedouin
dress--stepped simply out of one world into another. All he does
is to stain his eyebrows dark, put on the clothes, and cease to
resemble anything on earth except a desert-born Arab. I don't
know how long he was learning to make the transformation, but no
man could learn the trick in twenty years unless he loved the
desert and the sinewy men who live in it.

He looked me over again narrowly, and then decided I must return
upstairs and shave my head. "The only chance you've got of not
being pulled apart between four camels, or pushed over a
precipice, is to look like darwaish. Have Narayan Singh stain the
back of your neck with henna--not too much of it--just a
little--you're from Lahore, you know--a university product."

By the time I had carried out that order I could not even
recognize mys