He smiled at what he regarded her extravagant apprehension, returned some quiet answer, and proceeded on his way, never to return.
Asaad was treated harshly by his older brothers, and had reason to regard his life as imperiled: "I am in a sort of imprisonment," he said, "enemies within, and enemies without," Towards the last of March, twenty or more of his relations assembled, to take him to the Patriarch by force.

He expostulated with Tannus, the eldest of the family except one, as the chief manager in the affair, and besought him to desist from a step so inconsistent with their fraternal relations.

The unnatural brother turned from him in cold indifference, which so affected Asaad that he went aside, and prayed and wept.
In the evening, he at one time addressed the whole assembled company in this manner: "If I had not read the Gospel, I should have been astonished at this movement of yours; but now I see through it all.
It is just what the Gospel has told me to expect; 'The brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and a man's foes shall be they of his own household.' Here you see it is just so.

You have assembled together here to fulfill this prophecy of the Gospel.

What have I done against you?
What is my crime, that it should have called together such an assemblage?
Be it that I take the blessed Bible as my only guide to heaven, does that injure you?
Is it a crime that renders me worthy of being taken as a malefactor, and sent into confinement ?" Surrounded, as he was, by men insensible to pity, the mother's heart was deeply moved seeing him arrested and borne away as if he had been a murderer.