ld the Red,
had usurped the throne of Scotland, then the good Queen Margaret died in
the gray castle on the rock of Edinburgh, and the five orphaned children
were only saved from the vengeance of their bad uncle Donald by the
shrewd and daring device of the young Princess Edith, who bade their
good uncle Edgar, the Atheling, guide them, under cover of the mist,
straight through the Red Donald's knights and spearmen to England and
safety.

You would naturally suppose that the worst possible place for the
fugitives to seek safety was in Norman England; for Edgar the Atheling,
a Saxon prince, had twice been declared king of England by the Saxon
enemies of the Norman conquerors, and the children of King Malcolm and
Queen Margaret--half Scotch, half Saxon--were, by blood and birth, of
the two races most hateful to the conquerors. But the Red King in his
rough sort of way--hot to-day and cold to-morrow--had shown something
almost like friendship, for this Saxon Atheling, or royal prince, who
might have been king of England had he not wisely submitted to the
greater power of Duke William the Conqueror and to the Red William, his
son. More than this, it had been rumored that some two years before,
when there was truce between the kings of England and of Scotland, this
harsh and headstrong English king, who was as rough and repelling as a
chestnut burr, had seen, noticed, and expressed a particular interest
in the eleven-year-old Scottish girl--this very Princess Edith who now
sought his protection.

So, when this wandering uncle boldly threw himself upon Norman courtesy,
and came with his homeless nephews and nieces straight to the Norman
court for safety, King William Rufus not only received these children
of his hereditary foeman with favor and royal welcome, but gave them
comfortable lodgment in quaint old Gloucester town, where he held his
court.

But even when the royal fugitives deemed themselves safest were they in
the greatest danger.

Among the attendant knights and nobles of King William's court was
a Saxon knight known as Sir Ordgar, a "thegn,"(1) or baronet, of
Oxfordshire; and because those who change their opinions--political
or otherwise--often prove the most unrelenting enemies of their former
associates, it came to pass that Sir Ordgar, the Saxon, conceived a
strong dislike for these orphaned descendants of the Saxon kings, and
convinced himself that the best way to secure himself in the good graces
of th