the triple Gate-way of the Sepulchre, nearly a mile away.

Both were handsome and healthy--true children of old Tadmor, that
glittering, fairy-like city which, Arabian legends say, was built
by the genii for the great King Solomon ages and ages ago. Midway
between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, it was the
meeting-place for the caravans from the east and the wagon trains
from the west, and it had thus become a city of merchant princes,
a wealthy commercial republic, like Florence and Venice in the
middle ages--the common toll-gate for both the East and West.

But, though a tributary colony of Rome, it was so remote a
dependency of that mighty mistress of the world that the yoke of
vassalage was but carelessly worn and lightly felt. The great
merchants and chiefs of caravans who composed its senate and
directed its affairs, and whose glittering statues lined the
sculptured cornice of its marble colonnades, had more power and
influence than the far-off Emperor at Rome, and but small heed
was paid to the slender garrison that acted as guard of honor to
the strategi or special officers who held the colony for Rome and
received its yearly tribute. And yet so strong a force was Rome
in the world that even this free-tempered desert city had
gradually become Romanized in manners as in name, so that Tadmor
had become first Adrianapolis and then Palmyra. And this
influence had touched even these children in the portico. For
their common ancestor--a wealthy merchant of a century
before--had secured honor and rank from the Emperor Septimus
Severus --the man who "walled in" England, and of whom it was
said that "he never performed an act of humanity or forgave a
fault." Becoming, by the Emperor's grace, a Roman citizen, this