ibility laid on his young
shoulders turned to such wise advisers as might have followed Margaret
into the stronghold, and took thought how to save the children and carry
off the precious remains of the Queen. The expedient to which they had
recourse was one which their assailants evidently thought impossible.
That the rock upon which Edinburgh Castle stands should have been
considered inaccessible by practical mountaineers like the followers of
Donald Bane seems curious: but in those days the art of climbing for
pleasure had not been discovered, and it had no place in the methods of
warfare. It seemed enough to the assailants to hold the gates and the
summit of the eastern slopes, where probably there must already have
been some clusters of huts or rough half-fortified dwellings descending
from the Castle Hill, foreshadowing a Lawnmarket at least if not yet a
Canongate. No one would seem to have thought of the possibility of any
descent on the other side from that perpendicular rock.

But despair sharpens the wits, and no doubt after many miserable
consultations a desperate expedient was found. Even now nothing but a
goat, or a schoolboy, or perhaps a young private fearful of punishment,
could find a way down the wonderful curtain of rock which forms the west
side of Edinburgh Castle; and to guide the children and their
attendants, a sorrowful little group of mourners, distracted with grief
and fear, and Margaret's body in its litter, down those rocks where
there was scarcely footing for an alert and experienced climber, must
have been one of the most difficult as it was one of the boldest of
undertakings. While the rebel host raged on the other side, and any
traitor might have brought the enemy round to intercept that slow and
painful descent, it was accomplished safely under cover of "a great
myst," Heaven, as all thought, helping the forlorn fugitives by that
natural shield. Mists are no rare things, as everybody knows, on these
heights. Perhaps it was the well-known easterly haar, the veil of salt
sea fog which Edinburgh so often wraps round her still, which, blowing
up from the mouth of the Firth, enveloped the travellers and hid them in
its folds of whiteness, impenetrable by the closest watcher, till they
had safely reached the level ground, and stealing down to the Queen's
Ferry escaped to loyal Fife and their home in Dunfermline. Needless to
say that this mist was a miraculous agency to all the family and
serva