Will it be believed that the _Vali_ was either too fearful, or too stupid, to rise to this opportunity? He gave orders to keep the man in custody till next day, saying, "then he shall show us the depôts; and if his story is true about the guns, we can proceed to arrest the brigands themselves." All suggestions that the guns could not be removed without some delay, but that the brigands would certainly not continue in that night's meeting-place after the discoveries had begun, were unavailing; and nothing was done that night. Next day the man redeemed his pledge, and there was rare excitement in Van. Rifles by the hundred were unearthed from various places; and one realized, in watching the searchers, how admirably a mud house lends itself to the making of a _cache_. The earth of Van sets into excellent sun-dried brick (in fact Urartian forts built of it in 800 B.C., remain to this day), and house walls of this material are usually about three feet thick. A hollow large enough to contain a score of rifles can easily be excavated in the middle third of the thickness, and the place built up again. Once let the fresh mud plaster have time to dry, and what tapping or sounding will reveal the hollow that exists behind it? Rifles to the number of nearly 500, half a million cartridges, and some three hundred packets of dynamite, were the spoil of that day.[123] One must own that the search was conducted as courteously as might be. A large proportion of the cartridges were found in a recess of the wall in the sanctuary of one specially prominent church; but every care was taken not to disturb the adornments of the altar, though irreverent conduct would not have been without excuse just then. Similarly, a young woman found alone in one of the houses that the searchers entered, was not only not molested, but was even allowed to exhaust a most copious vocabulary of abuse on the head of the informer. It was strange to see the Turkish soldiers knocking civilly at doors which could have been sent in by a blow from the butt of a rifle.