old chronicler, John of Fordun, tells the story of the fight,
for which there is neither need nor space here. The glove of each
contestant was flung into the lists by the judge, and the dispute
committed for settlement to the power of God and their own good swords.
It is a stirring picture of those days of daring and of might, when
force took the place of justice, and the deadliest blows were the only
convincing arguments. But, though supported by the favor of the king and
the display of splendid armor, Ordgar's treachery had its just reward.
Virtue triumphed, and vice was punished. Even while treacherously
endeavoring (after being once disarmed) to stab the brave Godwine with
a knife which he had concealed in his boot, the false Sir Ordgar was
overcome, confessed the falsehood of his charge against Edgar the
Atheling and Edith his niece, and, as the quaint old record has it,
"The strength of his grief and the multitude of his wounds drove out his
impious soul."

So young Edith was saved; and, as is usually the case with men of his
character, the Red King's humor changed completely. The victorious
Godwine received the arms and lands of the dead Ordgar; Edgar the
Atheling was raised high in trust and honor; the throne of Scotland,
wrested from the Red Donald, was placed once more in the family of
King Malcolm, and King William Rufus himself became the guardian and
protector of the Princess Edith.

And when, one fatal August day, the Red King was found pierced by an
arrow under the trees of the New Forest, his younger brother, Duke
Henry, whom men called Beauclerc, "the good scholar," for his love of
learning and of books, ascended the throne of England as King Henry I.
And the very year of his accession, on the 11th of November, 1100, he
married, in the Abbey of Westminster, the Princess Edith of Scotland,
then a fair young lady of scarce twenty-one. At the request of her
husband she took, upon her coronation day, the Norman name of Matilda,
or Maud, and by this name she is known in history and among the queens
of England.

So scarce four and thirty years after the Norman conquest, a Saxon
princess sat upon the throne of Norman England, the loving wife of the
son of the very man by whom Saxon England was conquered.

"Never, since the battle of Hastings," says Sir Francis Palgrave, the
historian, "had there been such a joyous day as when Queen Maud was
crowned." Victors and vanquished, Normans and Saxons, were united