Now Edmund, according to the story, was a humane and gentle-minded man, much more interested in deeds of benevolence and of piety than in warlike undertakings and exploits, and he was very far from being well prepared to meet this formidable foe.  In fact, he sought refuge in a retired residence called Heglesdune.  The Danes, having taken some Saxons captive in a city which they had sacked and destroyed, compelled them to make known the place of the king’s retreat.  Hinquar, the captain of the Danes, sent him a summons to come and surrender both himself and all the treasures of his kingdom.  Edmund refused.  Hinquar then laid siege to the palace, and surrounded it; and, finally, his soldiers, breaking in, put Edmund’s attendants to death, and brought Edmund himself, bound, into Hinquar’s presence.

Hinquar decided that the unfortunate captive should die.  He was, accordingly, first taken to a tree and scourged.  Then he was shot at with arrows, until, as the account states, his body was so full of the arrows that remained in the flesh that there seemed to be no room for more.  During all this time Edmund continued to call upon the name of Christ, as if finding spiritual refuge and strength in the Redeemer in this his hour of extremity; and although these ejaculations afforded, doubtless, great support and comfort to him, they only served to irritate to a perfect phrensy of exasperation his implacable pagan foes.  They continued to shoot arrows into him until he was dead, and then they cut off his head and went away, carrying the dissevered head with them.  Their object was to prevent his friends from having the satisfaction of interring it with the body.  They carried it to what they supposed a sufficient distance, and then threw it off into a wood by the way-side, where they supposed it could not easily be found.

As soon, however, as the Danes had left the place, the affrighted friends and followers of Edmund came out, by degrees, from their retreats and hiding places.  They readily found the dead body of their sovereign, as it lay, of course, where the cruel deed of his murder had been performed.  They sought with mournful and anxious steps, here and there, all around, for the head, until at length, when they came into the wood where it was lying, they heard, as the historian who records these events gravely testifies, a voice issuing from it, calling them, and directing their steps by the sound.  They followed the voice, and, having recovered the head by means of this miraculous guidance, they buried it with the body.[1]

It seems surprising to us that reasonable men should so readily believe such tales as these; but there are, in all ages of the world, certain habits of belief, in conformity to which the whole community go together.  We all believe whatever is in harmony with, or analogous to, the general type of faith prevailing in our own generation.  Nobody could be persuaded now that a dead head could speak, or a wolf change his nature to protect it; but thousands will credit a fortune-teller, or believe that a mesmerized patient can have a mental perception of scenes and occurrences a thousand miles away.