“This is one of the new gates built by our king,” Salome told her. “He has caused inscriptions to be written about them so that all the world may know what adornments he has added to our fair city of Babylon. Our city that shall last for ever,” she added proudly. Rachel glanced at her, and thought of a great rubbish heap she had recently seen—“_the mound called Babil which covers the palace in which dwelt King Nebuchadnezzar nearly three thousand years ago_”—she remembered the very words of Sheshà.... How amazing it was to be walking with this little girl in the very city that now lay under a mound of earth! To be talking to a little girl who lived nearly three thousand years ago, and had no idea that her home was even now being dug up in fragments by men living in the world to-day!... For a moment it all seemed too puzzling to be true. Rachel rubbed her eyes with her disengaged hand, and half expected the whole vision to disappear. Yet when she looked again, the lovely scene still lay before her, and she could feel the warmth of Salome’s little brown hand within her own. [Illustration] “I must be getting used to the Past,” she reflected. “Because now I can _feel_ as well as see the people. They didn’t seem quite real when I was with Sheshà in Egypt. But now it’s different. Is it because _these_ people didn’t live quite so far back into the Past as King Cheops and his slaves, I wonder?” She glanced again at the grave, strangely clad little girl at her side, who talked as though she were quite grown up. “I mustn’t say anything about the rubbish mound, or tell her anything about the sort of world _I_ belong to,” she reflected hurriedly. “She wouldn’t understand. I suppose she thinks I’m living in her times, but have just never happened to see Babylon before. And that’s quite true!” she added to herself, with a little inward chuckle. While such thoughts as these were hurrying through her mind, she was looking right and left, full of eager curiosity, for the bridge she was crossing was thronged with amazing figures. Men with black, curling beards, bare-legged, and bare-armed, wearing tunics of brilliant colours, passed her. Some of these were seated upon the backs of camels following one another in long lines. The soft-footed, grey beasts were loaded with merchandise, and the bales on either side of their humped backs swayed as they moved. They were decked fantastically with trappings of plaited scarlet wool, hung with tassels of brilliant colour. After such a procession of camels and their drivers, would come perhaps a chariot with four horses abreast, driven by a fierce-looking man in a gorgeous fringed robe, whose dark eyes flashed like jewels in his bronzed face. Following one such chariot, she saw a group of girls in gauzy tunics, bracelets on their arms, tinkling anklets above their feet, dancing as they came, and singing a wild song as they tossed their arms above their heads.