In our eyes the first of these symptoms is the one to determine our sympathies. We can forgive much in this country to a chieftain who does (as a rule) honestly exert himself to keep order; who has realized that it pays him better to protect his vassals than to oppress them; and who can be trusted to administer some sort of "Jeddart Justice" in fairly equable fashion to Kurd and Christian alike. But by Turkish officials generally we fear he is less appreciated. The Old Turks hate him with an A because he is Able, and the Young because he is Autocratic: and we cannot pretend to deny that he is sometimes "a bit of a handful," and that his methods of administration are rather ingenuously Draconian. As recently as in 1909 he was at open war with the Government, and in this particular quarrel he was not very greatly to blame. The chief sinners were Sabonji Pasha and some of the corrupt gang who were running the administration at Mosul. They coveted some of the Sheikh's villages, and the Sheikh refused to part.[82] Accordingly they trumped up a charge that he was conspiring against the _Hukumet_; a charge which could readily be made plausible, for there is not a chief in the province but lets his tongue loose against the Government at times. The true test of serious disaffection, however, is the courting of Russian assistance; and the prominent Russophiles hereabouts are the Sheikh's particular _bêtes noirs_. At any rate the charge won credence. The Sheikh's friends were arrested and imprisoned. An army was marched into his territory; his villages were seized and occupied, and his wives carried off to Mosul. The Sheikh himself for some months was a homeless fugitive in the mountains; and it was then that he reaped the fruit of his good treatment of his villagers, for not a man, Christian or Moslem, ever dreamt of betraying him to his foes. Then, too, we first made his acquaintance, disguised in mean raiment and attended by a single follower, lurking in some of the Christian villages just beyond the limits of his domain.