ing Malcolm came down, no doubt with such state as he could
muster, to see the wandering foreign princes. He was not unlearned, but
knew Latin and the English tongue, though he could not read, as we are
afterwards told. He had already reigned for fourteen years, after about
as long a period of exile, so that he could not now be in his first
youth, although he was still unmarried. He came down with his suite to
the shore amid all the stir of the inquiring country folk, gathered
about to see this strange thing--the ship with its unusual equipments,
and the group of noble persons in their fine clothes who were to be seen
upon the deck. The Athelings were carrying back with them to Hungary all
the gifts with which the Emperor, Henry III, had loaded their father
when he went to England, and had jewels and vessels of gold and many
fine things unknown to the Scots. And Margaret, even though not so
prominent as the chroniclers say, was evidently by the consent of all a
most gracious and courteous young lady, with unusual grace and vivacity
of speech. The grave middle-aged King, with his recollections of a
society more advanced than his own, which probably had made him long for
something better than his rude courtiers could supply, would seem at
once to have fallen under the spell of the wandering princess. She was
such a mate as a poor Scots King, badgered by turbulent clans, could
scarcely have hoped to find--rich and fair and young, and of the best
blood in Christendom. Whether the wooing was as short as the record we
have no means of knowing, but in the same year, 1070, Margaret was
brought with great rejoicing to Dunfermline, and there married to her
King, amid the general joy.

[Illustration: DUNFERMLINE ABBEY]

The royal house at Dunfermline, according to the chronicle, was
surrounded by a dense forest and guarded by immense cliffs. The latter
particular, however, it is difficult to accept, for the dell in which
the ruins of the mediaeval palace (a building much more recent, it is
needless to say, than that of Malcolm) still stand, though picturesque
in its acclivities and precipices, is as far as possible from including
any cliffs that could be called immense. The young Queen made a great
change in the internal arrangements of what was no doubt a grim
stronghold enough, soft as was the country around. Probably the absence
of decoration and ornament struck her painfully, accustomed as she was
to palaces of a very differe