The holidays were at hand. The boys were so absorbed in their preparations for departure and their farewell visits to town, that the affair of the Juniors' expulsion was to some extent forgotten. Each morning small groups of students left the college, to attach themselves to some caravan of merchants. They scattered to the four points of the compass; some journeyed toward the high table-lands of Asia Minor, others set out for the Euphrates or the Tigris, in order to go down stream on rafts as far as Mosul or Bagdad. As they separated, they made great protestations of friendship, which were speedily forgotten in the happiness of returning home. Dikran and Nejib were among the first to leave, their home being at Aleppo, a city easily reached from Aintab. Next, came the turn of Garabed, Soghomon and Samouil. The Juniors who had been expelled went to Syria, for the president of the American college at Beyrout, a man of broad views, had promised to admit them at the next term. The college emptied rapidly; the dormitories acquired a mournful atmosphere, and the voices of chance speakers re-echoed in the deserted corridors. Archag and Aram still lingered, impatiently chafing at the delay. As a violent epidemic of typhus was raging at Diarbekir, Aram's parents thought it more prudent for their son not to come home. This was a hard blow for the poor boy, and he was broken-hearted at the idea of having to spend the holidays all alone at Aintab, but at the last moment Archag invited his friend to go home with him to Van. Needless to say, the proposal was joyfully accepted. After a week's delay, the boys succeeded in making arrangements for their journey; they were the last to go, and Badvili Melikian was the only person left to wish them a good journey. The merchants in whose company they were to travel were going to Tabriz to buy Persian silks to be sold again at Damascus and Beyrout. They were pressed for time, and made long stages, so that the journey from Aintab to Van occupied only sixteen days. Soon the country began to look familiar to Archag; he recognized villages where he had been with his father to buy horses or sheep, and at one place an old man who was a friend of Boghos Effendi stopped him for a chat; his was the first familiar face.