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. She wept, and Asaad sympathized with her, and
turned his back on the home of his childhood, weeping and praying
aloud.

He was first taken to the convent of Alma, and then to Canobeen.
That convent, where he was destined to wear out the miserable
remainder of his life, was in one of the wildest and least
accessible recesses of Lebanon.

More than a mouth passed without intelligence, when the Mission
received reliable information, that Asaad was in prison, and in
chains, and that he was beaten a certain number of stripes daily. A
cousin was afterwards permitted to visit him, and reported that he
found him sitting on the bare floor, his bed having been taken from
him, with a heavy chain around his neck, the other end of which was
fastened to the wall. He had also been deprived of all his books and
writing utensils. Fruitless efforts were made to effect his
deliverance, and his family at last relented, and joined in the
efforts. The mother accompanied one of the older sons to Canobeen,
and found him in chains, which she had not been willing to believe
till she saw it for herself. So decided were the two younger
brothers in their movements on his behalf, that they had to consul