In a little while we came to the tomb of Rachel. The small, mosque-like building that covers it is not very old, but the site is probably as well authenticated as any of that period. Jacob was on his way from Padan when she died, and he buried her by the roadside "when there was but a little way to come into Ephrath" (which is Bethlehem). He marked the grave with a pillar which the generations would not fail to point out, one to another, as the last resting-place of this mother in Israel who died that Benjamin might have life. Poor Rachel! Supplanted in her husband's love; denied long the natural heritage of woman; paying the supreme price at last, only to be left here by the wayside alone, outside the family tomb. All the others are gathered at Hebron in the Field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought from the children of Heth for Sarah's burial-place. Jacob, at the very last, made his sons swear that they would bury him at Hebron with the others. He remembered Rachel in her lonely grave, and spoke of her there, but did not ask that he be taken to lie by her side, or that she be laid with the others. He died as he had lived--self-seeking, unsympathetic--a commonplace old man. Just outside of Bethlehem we were welcomed by a crowd of little baksheesh girls, of a better look and distinctly of a better way than the Jerusalem type. They ran along with the carriage and began a chant which, behold, was German, at least Germanesque: "Oh, du Fröliche! Oh, du Heilege! Baksheesh! Baksheesh!" I suppose "Oh, thou happy one; Oh, thou holy one," would be about the translation, with the wailing refrain at the end. I think we gave them something. I hope so; they are after us always, and we either give them or we don't, without much discrimination. You can't discriminate. They are all wretched and miserably needy. You give to get rid of them, or when pity clutches a little fiercer than usual at your heart. [Illustration: A CAMEL TRAIN LED THE WAY THROUGH THE GATES] So we were at the gates of Bethlehem--the little town whose name is familiar at the firesides of more than half the world--a name that always brings with it a feeling of bright stars and dim fields: "Where shepherds watched their flocks by night All seated on the ground," and of angel voices singing peace and goodwill. A camel-train led the way through the gates.