A sinister command, this: we knew that similar measures had been taken before the terrible Armenian massacres, and we felt that some such fate might be in preparation for our people.

With the arms gone, the head men of the village knew that our last hold over the Arabs, our last chance for defense against sudden violence, would be gone, and they had refused to give them up.

A house-to-house search had been made--fruitlessly, for our little arsenal was safely cached in a field, beneath growing grain.
It was a tense, unpleasant situation.

At any time the Turks might decide to back up their demand by some of the violent methods of which they are past masters.

A family council was held in my home, and it was decided to send my sister, a girl of twenty-three, to some friends at the American Syrian Protestant College at Beirut, so that we might be able to move freely without the responsibility of having a girl at home, in a country where, as a matter of course, the women-folk are seized and carried off before a massacre.