In another village, _Aaleih_, near Beirut, the people were formerly so stupid that the Arabs say that once when the clouds came up the mountains and settled like a bank of fog under the cliff on which their village is built, they thought it was the sea, and went to fish in the clouds! So you see the Syrians are as fond of humorous stories as other people. PART IV. But here we are coming upon a gypsy camp. The Arabs call them Nowar, and you will find that the Arab women of the villages are careful to keep an eye on their little children when the gypsies are around. They often steal children in the towns and cities, when they can find them straying away from home at dusk, and then sell them as servants in Moslem families. Last year we were all greatly interested in a story of this kind, which I know you will be glad to hear. After the terrible massacre in Damascus in 1860, thousands of the Greek and Greek Catholic families migrated to Beirut, and among them was a man named Khalil Ferah, who escaped the fire and sword with his wife and his little daughter Zahidy. I remember well how we were startled one evening in 1862, by hearing a crier going through the streets, "child lost! girl lost!" The next day he came around again, "child lost!" There was great excitement about it. The poor father and mother went almost frantic. Little Zahidy, who was then about six years old, was coming home from school with other girls in the afternoon, and they said a man came along with a sack on his back, and told Zahidy that her mother had sent him to buy her some sugar plums and then take her home, and she went away with him. It is supposed that he decoyed her away to some by-road and then put her into the great sack, and carried her off to the Arabs or the gypsies.