, the Atheling, did guide us, by ways we knew well, and by twists
and turnings that none knew better, straight through Red Donald's array,
and all unseen and unnoted of them, because of the blessed thickness of
the gathering mist."

"And this was YOUR device?" asked the boy, admiringly.

"Ay, but any one might have devised it too," replied young Edith,
modestly. "Sure, 't was no great device to use a Scotch mist for
our safety, and 't were wiser to chance it than stay and be stupidly
murdered by Red Donald's men. And so it was, good Robert, even as Mary
did say, that we came forth unharmed, from amidst them and fled here to
King William's court, where we at last are safe."

"Safe, say you, safe?" exclaimed the lad, impulsively. "Ay, as safe as
is a mouse's nest in a cat's ear--as safe as is a rabbit in a ferret's
hutch. But that I know you to be a brave and dauntless maid, I should
say to you----"

But, ere Edith could know what he would say, their conference was rudely
broken in upon. For a royal page, dashing up to the three, with scant
courtesy seized the arm of the elder girl, and said hurriedly:

"Haste ye, haste ye, my lady! Our lord king is even now calling for you
to come before him in the banquet-hall."

Edith knew too well the rough manners of those dangerous days. She freed
herself from the grasp of the page, and said:

"Nay, that may I not, master page. 'T is neither safe nor seemly for a
maid to show herself in baron's hall or in king's banquet-room."

"Safe and seemly it may not be, but come you must," said the page,
rudely. "The king demands it, and your nay is naught."

And so, hurried along whether she would or no, while her friend, Robert
Fitz Godwine, accompanied her as far as he dared, the young Princess
Edith was speedily brought into the presence of the king of England,
William H., called, from the color of his hair and from his fiery
temper, Rufus, or "the Red."

For Edith and Mary were both princesses of Scotland, with a history,
even before they had reached their teens, as romantic as it was
exciting. Their mother, an exiled Saxon princess, had, after the
conquest of Saxon England by the stern Duke William the Norman, found
refuge in Scotland, and had there married King Malcolm Canmore, the son
of that King Duncan whom Macbeth had slain. But when King Malcolm
had fallen beneath the walls of Alnwick Castle, a victim to English
treachery, and when his fierce brother Donald Bane, or Dona