The long looked for hour came at last. Edward was out, one day, hunting near Wareham, in Dorsetshire, when, either having outridden his attendants, or purposely resolved to visit his mother-in-law, he rode up to Corfe Castle, where she resided with her son Ethelred, and without alighting from his horse, had a brief interview with Elfrida, at the gate. She received him with an assumed kindness, and urgently pressed him to dismount. This he declined doing, and having requested to see his brother Ethelred, he called for a cup of wine, which was brought, when, just as he had raised it to his lips, one of Elfrida's attendants stepped behind him, and stabbed him in the back. Dropping the cup from his hand, he struck the spurs into his horse, and fled; for we can readily imagine that one glance at the countenance of Elfrida satisfied the wounded monarch that she was the instigator of the murderous deed. With no one near to follow or support him, he soon fainted through loss of blood, and fell from his saddle; the affrighted steed still plunged onward, with headlong speed, dragging the body of the king along, over the rugged road, as he still hung with his foot suspended in the stirrup. When discovered by his attendants, he was dead--his course was traced by the beaten ground over which his mangled body had passed, and the blood that had stained the bladed grass, and left its crimson trail upon the knotted stems against which it had struck. His remains were burnt, and there is some doubt whether even his ashes were preserved for interment. "No worse deed," says the Saxon chronicle, "had been committed among the people of the Anglo-Saxons since they first came to the land of Britain." Edward was not more than eighteen years of age when he was murdered.