The eternal feminine and the eternal human speak there; and there, for this gallantest of women, were two keys that locked up the endless troubles and anxieties that ceased not day or night.  But sometimes the flesh was weak, and in the privacy of her diary she says, ’How long, O Lord?’ But for that there was the master-key that unlocks all wards, and a little further on we read, ’One of the verses that helps to keep my faith steady is, “He that spared not His own Son.”  For weeks we have had no word from the outside world, but we “rest in Jehovah and wait patiently for Him."’

The conditions inside the crowded yards grew steadily worse.  Dysentery was rife, and the deaths from it in that narrow space averaged thirty a day.  The state of the sufferers grew so terrible that it was difficult to get any one to look after them at all, and many were lying in the open yards, and the weather, which hitherto had been warm, got cold, and snow fell.  It was with the greatest difficulty that food could be obtained for those in health, and that of a kind utterly unsuitable to the sick, while in the minds of their nurses was the bitter knowledge that with proper diet hundreds of lives could have been saved, and hundreds of cases of illness avoided.

For the dead there was but a small percentage of coffins available, and ’the great mass are just dropped into the great trench of rotting humanity (in the yard).  As I stand at my window I see one after another of the little bodies carried by ... and the condition of the living is more pitiful than that of the dead—­hungry, ragged, dirty, sick, cold, wet, swarming with vermin.  Not for all the wealth of all the rulers of Europe would I bear for one hour their responsibility for the suffering and misery of this one little corner of the world alone.  A helpless unarmed Christian community turned over to the sword and the passion of Islam!’

On the top of this came an epidemic of typhoid, twenty-seven cases on the first day.  Outside in the town the Turkish Consul began hanging Christians, and the missioners were allowed to take the bodies and bury them.  There were threats that the mission would be entered, and all young men (possible combatants) killed, but this fear was not realised.  The typhoid increased, and the doctor of the mission and others of the staff fell ill with it; but the patience and service of the remainder never faltered, while the same spirit of uncomplaining suffering animated the refugees.  ‘Mr. McDowell,’ so the diarist relates, ’saw a tired and weary woman with a baby in her arms, sitting in one of the seats, and said to her, “Where do you stay?” She said “Just here.”  “How long have you been here?” “Since the beginning.” (two months) she replied.  “How do you sleep at night?” “I lay the baby on the desk in front of me, and I have this post at the back to lean against.  This is a very good place.  Thank you very much."’

In April there comes a break in the diary after the day on which the following entry is made:—­