morning of Thursday, March
2, 1826.

Asaad's statement was forthwith copied and sent in various
directions through the mountains, and afterwards it had a much wider
circulation in a printed form.

The Patriarch's first effort to recapture the fugitive, was by means
of a Turkish sheriff, and it failed. On the following Monday, an
uncle and the two elder brothers of Asaad came to see what they
could do; and they were followed by another brother, and then by the
mother and her youngest son. The older brothers were loud and
violent in their denunciations. All these the persecuted young
Christian met with a calm firmness, but he was at one time almost
overcome by the distress of his mother. She was at length pacified
by the declarations, that he was not a follower of the English, that
he derived not his creed from them, that he believed in the Trinity,
that Jesus was God, and that Mary was his mother. Phares, the
youngest brother, consented to receive a New Testament, and was
evidently affected and softened by the interview.

On the 16th of March, Asaad received a kind and fatherly epistle
from the Patriarch, begging him to return home, and relieve the
anxieties of his mother and family, and giving him full assurance,
that he need not fear being interfered with in his freedom. He was
thus approached on his weak side. Too confiding, he really believed
this insidious letter, and that he might now go home and live there
with his religion unshackled. He wrote a favorable reply. The family
was doubtless urged to make sure of the victim before anything
occurred to change his mind, and the very next day four of his
relations, including Phares, came to escort him to Hadet. The
missionaries all believed it perilous, and so he thought himself,
but he believed, also, that there was now a door opened for him
prudently to preach the Gospel. At Beirut, he said, he could only
use his pen, "but who is there in this country," he asked, "that
reads?" One of the sisters of the mission said, as she took him by
the hand, that she expected never to see him again in this world. 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