We wandered on for what seemed to me an interminable distance amongst the palm-groves, passing many _ksor_, at each of which I hoped in turn we were about to take up our quarters for the night, and each of which we passed by without entering. I had placed myself and my plans entirely in the hands of the _zitat_—our guarantee—from Dads, and left everything to him. He was an excellent fellow, and his opinion of myself seemed to increase when he found I could trudge my forty miles or so a-day with an appearance—though by no means a true one—of little inconvenience. He was a typical Berber this latest addition to our party, some 6 feet in height, with a fair white skin and dark eyes and eyebrows. His face was clean shaven except for the small pointed beard on the end of his chin, and a remarkably handsome face it was. But his heart was better even than his looks, and more than once, as we tried to sleep of a night, our teeth chattering with the frost, he would cover me with his warm cloak, sharing it with me until I slept, when he would give up his half so that I might be warmer—and in the morning tell a dozen lies, saying that he had been so hot he had kicked it off, and it was only by accident that I had found myself warm and comfortable, and him half frozen. I think the only qualms of conscience I felt at being in disguise were with this good fellow, for as yet he had not the faintest idea of my identity. So much did this trouble me that I took advantage of our lying huddled together under his warm cloak that night to tell him the whole story of my journey, whispered, lest we should be overheard. He said but little, but I knew full well that I could trust him, and in the morning I was warm, wrapped up in his _haidus_, and he, only in his _chamira_, shivered with the frost. If anything his attention to my comforts increased after I had confided to him the fact of my disguise; and every now and then he would burst out into the merriest of laughs as we trudged along, thinking the whole affair a tremendous joke, and reiterating his approval of my venturing where none had ever trod, and where my life if discovered was worth probably about half-an-hour’s purchase. Nor was his astonishment at my knowledge of Arabic—imperfect though it is—a small one; for, himself a Berber, he too spoke it as a foreign tongue, and if anything not so fluently as myself.