"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.