t this was the gravest of
all his dangers, strove, though without effect, to reason with the angry
king, Damian, the page, as we have seen, hurried after the Princess
Edith.

"How now, mistress!" broke out the Red King, as the young girl was
ushered into the banquet-hall, where the disordered tables, strewn with
fragments of the feast, showed the ungentle manners of those brutal
days. "How now, mistress! do you prate of kings and queens and of your
own designs--you, who are but a beggar guest? Is it seemly or wise
to talk,--nay, keep you quiet, Sir Atheling; we will have naught from
you,--to talk of thrones and crowns as if you did even now hope to win
the realm from me--from me, your only protector?"

The Princess Edith was a very high-spirited maiden, as all the stories
of her girlhood show. And this unexpected accusation, instead of
frightening her, only served to embolden her. She looked the angry
monarch full in the face.

"'T is a false and lying charge, lord king," she said, "from whomsoever
it may come. Naught have I said but praise of you and your courtesy to
us motherless folk. 'T is a false and lying charge; and I am ready to
stand test of its proving, come what may."

"Even to the judgment of God, girl?" demanded the king.

And the brave girl made instant reply: "Even to the judgment of God,
lord king." Then, skilled in all the curious customs of those warlike
times, she drew off her glove. "Whosoever my accuser be, lord king,"
she said, "I do denounce him as foresworn and false, and thus do I throw
myself upon God's good mercy, if it shall please him to raise me up a
champion." And she flung her glove upon the floor of the hall, in face
of the king and all his barons.

It was a bold thing for a girl to do, and a murmur of applause ran
through even that unfriendly throng. For, to stand the test of a "wager
of battle," or the "judgment of God," as the savage contest was called,
was the last resort of any one accused of treason or of crime. It meant
no less than a "duel to the death" between the accuser and the accused
or their accepted champions, and, upon the result of the duel hung the
lives of those in dispute. And the Princess Edith's glove lying on the
floor of the Abbey hall was her assertion that she had spoken the truth
and was willing to risk her life in proof of her innocence.

Edgar the Atheling, peace-lover, though he was, would gladly have
accepted the post of champion for his niece, but,