intervention of that saint, it "might
be granted to him to receive a visible and tangible token by which all
future ages might be assured that the Scots were rightfully subject to
the King of England. His prayer was granted in this way: Standing in
front of one of the rocks at Dunbar, he made a cut at it with his sword,
and left a score which proved to be the _precise_ length of an ell, and
was adopted as the regulation test of that measure of length." This
legend of the "miraculously created ellwand standard" was afterwards
duly attested by a weekly service in the Church of St. John of Beverley.
(See Burton's _History of Scotland_, ii. 319.) In the official account
of the miracle, as cited by Rymer, it is declared that during its
performance the rock cut like butter or soft mud under the stroke of
Athelstane's sword. "Extrahens gladium de vagina percussit in cilicem,
quae adeo penetrabilis, Dei virtute agente, fuit gladio, quasi eadem hora
lapis butirum esset, vel mollis glarea; ... et usque ad presentem diem,
evidens signum patet, quod Scoti, ab Anglis devicti ac subjugata;
monumento tali evidenter cunctis adeuntibus demonstrante." (Foedera,
tom. i. pars ii. 771.)]

[Footnote 271: Elsewhere (p. 45) Mr. Taylor corroborates Sir Isaac
Newton's opinion that the _working_ cubit by which the Pyramid was built
was the cubit of Memphis.]

[Footnote 272: The interior of any Scottish cottage, where the inside of
the thatched or slated roof is left exposed by uncovered joists within,
contains, on the same principle, six sides, and a seventh or the floor.]

[Footnote 273: "The _clue_ was not prepared for any immediate successors
of the builders, but was intended, on the contrary, to endure to a most
remote period. And it has so endured and served such a purpose even down
to those our own days." (Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great
Pyramid_, vol. i. p. 157.) "The builders, or planners rather, of the
Great Pyramid, did not leave their building without sure testimony to
its chief secret; for there, before the eyes of all men for ages, had
existed these _two diagonal joints_ in the passage floor, pointing
directly and constantly to what was concealed in the roof just opposite
them, and no one ever thought of it. Practically, then, we may say with
full certainty that these two floor marks were left there to guide _men_
who, it was expected, would come subsequently, earnestly desiring, on
rightly-informed principles, to lo