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
