had even more reason to fear than the sovereign himself. Little wonder that, confronted by a situation so full of peril, the Faith should have been driven underground, and that arrests, interrogations, imprisonment, vituperation, spoliation, tortures and executions should constitute the outstanding features of this convulsive period in its development. The pilgrimages that had been initiated in Adrianople, and which later assumed in Akká impressive proportions, together with the dissemination of the Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh and the circulation of enthusiastic reports through the medium of those who had attained His presence served, moreover, to inflame the animosity of clergy and laity alike, who had foolishly imagined that the breach which had occurred in the ranks of the followers of the Faith in Adrianople and the sentence of life banishment pronounced subsequently against its Leader, would seal irretrievably its fate. In Ábádih a certain Ustád ‘Alí-Akbar was, at the instigation of a local Siyyid, apprehended and so ruthlessly thrashed that he was covered from head to foot with his own blood. In the village of Tákúr, at the bidding of the _Sh_áh, the property of the inhabitants was pillaged, Ḥájí Mírzá Riḍá-Qulí, a half-brother of Bahá’u’lláh, was arrested, conducted to the capital and thrown into the Síyáh-_Ch_ál, where he remained for a month, whilst the brother-in-law of Mírzá Ḥasan, another half-brother of Bahá’u’lláh, was seized and branded with red-hot irons, after which the neighboring village of Dar-Kalá was delivered to the flames.