Of course, the game was a superb one for the Tashnakists, or for anyone who enjoys gambling against heavy odds with death as the penalty. For the unhappy Armenian _rayats_, who wanted to be let alone and given a chance to make a living, it was a different story. The revolutionaries wanted to do them good, no doubt; but few folk really like being done good to. And to like the peculiar Tashnakist method of getting them massacred for the assumed benefit of posterity was impossible for human nature. "We used to have one set of masters, and Allah knows that they were hard enough," was the moan they made; "now we have two, and Allah alone knows which is the harder." The revolutionaries came down on them, and demanded, at the mouth of a pistol, supplies to enable them to fight against the Government. Then they withdrew, and the Government came down on the poor _rayats_ in their turn (or in some cases turned the Kurdish irregulars loose upon them), for their crime in "resetting" avowed rebels against the State. How many deaths took place in the summer of 1905 in the Mush district was never known; but the estimates of those who were in a position to know put the numbers at about 5000. One party of the Fedais, in the course of their retreat to Persian territory entered the city of Van, where their proceedings gave a good instance _in petto_, of their whole _modus operandi_. Entering the "garden city" by night, they encountered one of the police patrols; and a skirmish resulted, in which a policeman was shot. Of course the troops were called out, and the house in which the rebels had been received was attacked and burnt, after another and sharper skirmish. Still they effected their retreat from it, and were lost to sight for a moment in the walled gardens of the town. The _Vali_ had now to choose. Should he order a strict search for those who were in open war against the Government and had thus outraged his authority? It was in his power to do so, and catch and destroy this band of a dozen men; but it was not in his power to hold the troops if the search, with its attendant street-fighting, once began; and the act spelt massacre for an unknown number of peaceful Armenians. On the other hand, could he allow those rebels to retire uninjured? What would his master the Sultan say to him if he did? And would the troops, one of whose comrades had been "murdered by these Armenian dogs," obey him if he gave such an order? For twenty-four hours the scales wavered, every foreign house and Consulate being packed with terrified Armenian refugees. While in the Turkish quarter of the town the panic was hardly less, though less conspicuous; for to them every Armenian was a Fedai, and every Fedai had his pockets full of bombs.