In the year of our Lord 1101, on the very birthday of the Saviour and at the birthplace of the King of kings, Bethlehem is to witness the most gorgeous, striking scene in all its varied and dramatic history; for the long, cruel centuries of Moslem domination are over at last, the banners of the victorious Crusaders now float proudly above the ramparts of Jerusalem, and the mighty Baldwin, Count of Flanders by inheritance and Prince of Edessa by right of conquest, is to be crowned this Christmas Day the first Christian king of Palestine. Two years earlier, when the Saracens heard that the Western armies were approaching, they destroyed the Christian quarter of Bethlehem, leaving standing only the Church of the Nativity; but the gallant Tancred came promptly to the rescue of the frightened, homeless citizens with a hundred picked knights, and, as a reward of their valor, it was this little band who, looking northward from a hill near Bethlehem, were the first of all the Crusaders to gain the longed-for view of the Holy City. As soon as Jerusalem was taken and the Moslem army put to rout, the Crusaders set to work to rebuild the nearby City of the Nativity, and now that a ruler has been chosen for the new Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, the coronation ceremony is to take place at Bethlehem; for Baldwin, with a modesty not entirely in harmony with his previous ambitious and selfish career, has refused to be crowned in the Holy City where great David had his throne. Doubtless also the shrewd Count of Flanders is not blind to the dramatic possibilities of a Christmas coronation in the Christmas City. So to-day the plain, sombre interior of the Church of the Nativity is all ablaze with brilliant coloring. Along the walls of the nave are battle-worn standards, blessed by pious bishops in distant counties by the Rhine and the Rhone and the Northern Ocean, and sanctified since by many a gallant exploit before the walls of Nicea and Antioch, so that their escutcheons now bear crimson quarterings which were not embroidered there by the lovely ladies in the lonely palaces across the sea.