It is not a long walk to Bethany, a little over four miles they told us, and we soon saw the low gray stone houses with their roofs of mud not far ahead. As we approached the village, a veritable host of children rushed to meet us, calling, with a score of accents, words supposed to be English. At first we covered our ears then motioned to one child to speak. We learned that they were offering their services as guides. The moment we appeared to understand, the babel began again. “Mary and Martha,” they called. “Simon-Lazarus, I will show.” When we spoke they listened, but only for a moment. “You cannot all be our guides,” I said. “If you all follow we will go back to Jerusalem and no one will have _back-sheesh_—not one. We shall not look at the house of Mary and Martha.” The tallest among them, a lad of fourteen, he told me afterward, evidently repeated our words and he emphasized them with a flourish of a stout cane which he carried. He showed us a soiled card with a name written upon it which he said was his. We chose him and one other guide, a little girl of six who had pointed to herself proudly, saying, “I know—I know, Mary—Martha—Lazarus.” At a word from a villager passing on his donkey the children scattered and it was a great relief. Our young guide knew the method perfectly. Driving the dogs out of the way with his cane, he led us up a steep path to the house of a man who was a dwarf, badly crippled. He was to take us to the tomb of Lazarus which he did, when we had paid the piastres he asked. He insisted upon telling us the story before we went down the long winding stone steps worn smooth by the passing of men’s feet for centuries. He told it in very graphic fashion. We had only the dripping candles to light our way. Following him, we could hear his call at each turn, “Have care! Have care!” We decided not to make the entire descent of sixty steps but contented ourselves with looking down from the fortieth step into the black pit below. The air and sunshine were most welcome when we climbed back and, giving more piastres for the shepherds’ slings the old dwarf took from his pocket, we left him happy. We stood for a few moments at the entrance to the tomb, thinking of all that spot had meant in the centuries since it was recorded that, in warm human sympathy with the suffering sisters, “Jesus wept.”