place a week or two, so, seeing who my informant was, I swallowed
the fact. But it was a marvel. It seemed even greater when the
man strolled out, pausing to salute my host with the solemn
politeness that warfare with the desert breeds. You could not
imagine that at Ellis Island, or on Broadway--even on the stage.
It was too untheatrical to be acting; too individual to be
imitation; to unself-conscious to have been acquired. I
hazarded a guess.

"A red man, then. Carlisle for education. Swallowed again by
the first desert he stayed in for more than a week."

"Wrong. His name is Grim. Sounds like Scandinavian ancestry, on
one side. James Schuyler Grim--Dutch, then, on the other; and
some English. Ten generations in the States at any rate. He can
tell you all about this country. Why not call on him?"

It did not need much intelligence to agree to that suggestion;
but the British military take their code with them to the
uttermost ends of earth, behind which they wonder why so many
folks with different codes, or none, dislike them.

"Write me an introduction," I said.

"You won't need one. Just call on him. He lives at a place they
call the junior Staff Officers' Mess--up beyond the Russian
Convent and below the Zionist Hospital."

So I went that evening, finding the way with difficulty because
they talk at least eighteen languages in Jerusalem and, with the