The reader will remember the interesting account Mr. Williams gave of the conversion of an influential merchant at Mardin named Meekha.[1] This is the old man, Muksi Meekha, whom the chief of the police delivered over to the gensdarmes, with the charge to collect six thousand piasters from him. Mr. Barnum thus describes the treatment he received: "They took him out into the street and began to beat him with their gun-stocks. This is done by taking the gun in both hands and striking with it endwise. He promised to give security for the payment of the money in the morning, and begged to be allowed till morning to raise the money, as the shops were all shut; but they said, 'We must have the money now.' He wandered through the market in the vain hope of finding somebody who would advance the money, the guard all the time beating him, and so severely that he several times fell down, and his outer garment was torn into shreds; and he has since that time, now more than a week, kept his bed most of the time. At last he met a member of the Mejlis (a Turkish member), who told the guard that if it was money they wished they must take _kefil_ from him, and wait till morning, as it was now evening, and nobody could raise money at that time; 'but,' he said, 'if your object is to kill him, take him back to the chief of police and butcher him there.' They then took him back to the crowd, and he found a man who gave a part of the money and a note for the payment of the rest in the morning, and he was released. He thinks that he would have been killed but for the intervention of the Turk. [1] See Chapter xxvii. "Each one of the prisoners was then passed over to two gensdarmes. Some of these were at once delivered, by their friends advancing the money; but four of them, besides Muksi Meekha, were treated just as he was, and all of them have kept their beds most of the time since. "The police were at the same time sent to the houses of all the other Protestants, and they were brought, and the money which the sects demanded collected from them, by their paying the money or getting security for its payment in the morning. In this way, in the space of a few hours, and that evening, nineteen thousand piasters were collected." Only a very small portion of this money was ever refunded.