, after his uncle
had held the sovereign power for six months, made a rush upon Scotland
with the help of an English army, and overcame and displaced Donald; but
in his turn was overcome after a reign of a year and a half, Donald Bane
again resuming the power, which he held for three years more. By this
time young Edgar, Margaret's son, had come to man's estate, and with the
help of the faithful Saxons who still adhered to his uncle, Edgar
Atheling, and encouraged by dreams and revelations that the crown was to
be his, came back to Scotland and succeeded finally in overcoming Donald
and securing his inheritance. The period of anarchy and trouble lasted
for five years, and no doubt the civilisation and good order which
Malcolm and Margaret had toiled to establish were for the moment much
disturbed. But after Edgar's succession the interrupted progress was
resumed. "He was a man of faire havyng," says old Wynton, and in his
time the Saxon race came again to great honour and promotion, at once by
his own firm establishment upon the Scottish throne, and by the marriage
of his sister Maud to the new King of England, Henry I., which restored
the Saxon succession and united right to might in England. Thus after a
moment of darkness and downfall the seed of the righteous took root
again and prospered, and the children of St. Margaret occupied both
thrones. Edgar, like so many of his race, died childless; but he was
peacefully succeeded by his brother Alexander, who, though as much
devoted to church-building and good works as the rest of his family, was
apparently a more warlike personage, since he was called Alexander the
Fierce, an alarming title, and was apparently most prompt and
thoroughgoing in crushing rebellion and other little incidents of the
age. He was succeeded in his turn by the youngest of Margaret's sons,
David, that "sair sanct for the crown," who covered Scotland with
ecclesiastical foundations.

"He illumynyd in his dayes
His landys wyth kirkis and abbayis;
Bishoprychs he fand bot foure or three,
Bot or he deyd nyne left he."

Among the many other foundations made by King David was the house of the
Holy Rood which has been so familiar a name in Scottish history--built
low in the valley at the foot of the surrounding hills and that castle
in which the Queen died pressing the black rood--most precious
possession--to her dying breast. Whether a recollection of that scene,
which might well have