An instant disturbance prevailed on the King’s death. His army fled in dismay; his corpse was left on the ground, till a peasant carried it to Tynemouth; his men were dispersed, slain, or drowned in their flight; his young son Edmund, a stripling of eighteen or nineteen, just contrived to escape to Edinburgh Castle. The first tidings that met him there were, that his mother was dying; that she lay on her bed in great anxiety for her husband and sons, and finding no solace except in holding a fragment of the true Cross pressed to her lips, and repeating the fifty-first Psalm. The poor youth, escaped from a lost battle, and bearing such dreadful tidings, was led to her presence at once. “How fares it with your father and brother?” said she. He feared to tell her all, and tried to answer, “Well;” but she perceived how it was too plainly, and holding out the Holy Cross, commanded him to speak the truth. “They are slain, mother--both slain!” Margaret’s thoughts must have rushed back to the twenty-three years of uninterrupted affection she had enjoyed with her lord, to her gallant son, slain in his first battle, and onward to the unprotected state of the seven orphans she left in the wild kingdom. Agony indeed it was; but she blessed Him who sent it. “All praise be to Thee, everlasting God, who hast made me to suffer such anguish in my death.” She lingered on a few hours longer, while storms raged around. The wild Celts hated Malcolm’s improvements and Saxon arts of peace, and his brother Donald was placing himself at their head to deprive his lawful brothers of their heritage. A troop of Highlanders were on their way to besiege Edinburgh Castle, even when the holy Queen drew her last breath; and her friends had barely time to admire the sweet peacefulness that had spread over her wasted features, before they were forced to carry her remains away in haste and secrecy, attended by her weeping, trembling children, to Dumfermline Abbey, where she was buried. Her children, seven in number (for Ethelred, the eldest, had died in infancy), were left unprotected. Edmund was only eighteen, and timid and gentle. Donald seized the crown; and the orphans remained in great danger, till their brave uncle, Edgar Etheling, learnt the fatal tidings, and, coming from England, fetched them all home with him, giving the two girls, Edith and Mary, into the care of their aunt Christina, who was now Abbess of Wilton. It was at some danger to himself that he took the desolate children under his protection. A man named Orgar accused him to William Rufus of intending to raise his nephews to the English crown. A knight, named Goodwin, no doubt of Saxon blood, no sooner heard the aspersion, than he answered by avowing the honor and faithfulness of his Etheling, threw down his glove, and defied Orgar to single combat--“God show the right.” It was shown; Orgar fell, and Saxons and Normans both rejoiced, for the Etheling had made himself much beloved.