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 they reported, the reminder of deportations from other cities.

When we arrived at Arabkir we were ordered to encamp at the edge of the city. Parties of exiles from many villages between Arabkir and Sivas already were there. Some of them still had their men and boys with them, others told us how their men had been killed along the route.

The Armenians of Arabkir itself were awaiting deportation, herded in a party of 8,000 or more, near where we halted. They had been waiting five days, and did not know what had happened to their homes in the city.

A special official came from Sivas to take charge of the deportations at Arabkir. With him came a company of zaptiehs. Halil Bey, a great military leader, with his staff, also was there, on his way to Constantinople where he was to take command of an army.

In the center of the city there was a large house which had been used by the prosperous Armenian shops. On the upper floors were large rooms which had been gathering places. Already this house had come to be known as the Kasab-Khana—the “butcher-house”—for here the leading men of the city had been assembled and slain.

Shortly after the special official’s arrival soldiers summoned all the men still with the Sivas exiles,