By this time it became evident to all in the island that the Pasha was laboring to provoke a collision, and that M. Derché was doing his best to assist him, but neither side seemed inclined to take the first step in open hostilities--the committee because they did not desire them, and the Pasha because he desired to avoid the responsibility of them. The first blood shed was of Christian by Christian, and furnishes so good an illustration of Cretan manners that it seems worth detailing. During the exchange of words which had taken place between the Pasha and the Assembly, a messenger of the former, a Cretan Christian, was insulted by one of the committee's people, spit on, and bitterly reproached for his unpatriotic subserviency. His son shortly after assassinated the insulter. Both were Sphakiotes, a race with whom blood-vengeance is a religious obligation. It was supposed that the assassination was instigated by the Pasha as the means of bringing on hostilities; and, when the relatives of the murdered man went to execute justice on the murderer, they found the house fortified, and after a short skirmish, during which a child of the murderer was killed by a ball fired through the door, the attacking party retired to wait a more convenient opportunity, and the Pasha sent a battalion of troops to the locality to protect the murderer's house, making no pretence whatever of bringing him to judgment. The move very nearly succeeded in bringing on hostilities, a captain of one of the adjoining villages, with his men, going at once to drive out the intruding Turks. The committee sent a body of picked men to disarm the villagers, in which they succeeded by stratagem, and so averted a collision.