The most of them have no certain time or place. Even the traditional stories help but little to make things clear. Yet they tell us more, and tell it better, than the dull records of the annalists. We know who these men really were--a strong, resolute race, passionate and proud, rough and cruel, living by open robbery, yet capable of deathless devotion, faithful to their word, hating all cowards and traitors to the death; not without a certain respect and admiration for their likes across the line, fond of jest and song, equal on occasion to a certain rude eloquence; and, before all, the most turbulent and troublesome. The Scots Borderers were dreaded by their own more peaceful countrymen; and to think of that narrow strip of country, hemmed in by the Highlands to the north and the Border clans on the south, is to shudder at the burden _it_ had to endure. For a race, whatever its good qualities, that lives by rapine, is like to be dangerous to friends as well as foes. Some Border clans, as the Armstrongs and the Elliots, were girded at as “always riding”; and they were not particular as to whom they rode against. Nay, both governments suspected the Borderers of an inexplicable tenderness for their neighbours. When they took part in a larger expedition, they would attack each other with a suspicious lack of heart. At best they were apt to look at war from their own point of view, and fight for mere prisoners or plunder. To meet such conditions the Border Laws were evolved. They were administered in chief by special officers called Wardens. Either Border was portioned out into three Marches: the East, the Middle, and the West (the Lordship of Liddesdale was included in the Scots Middle March, but sometimes it had a special Keeper of almost equal dignity with a Warden.) Each of the three Scots Wardens had a hundred pounds of yearly fee; he could appoint deputies, captains of strongholds, clerks, sergeants, and dempsters; he could call out the full force of his district to invade or beat back invasion; he represented the Sovereign, and was responsible for crimes. He must keep the Border clans in order by securing as hostages several of their most conspicuous sons, and either these were quartered on nobles on the other side of the Firth, or they were held in safer keeping in the king’s castles. He also held Justice Courts for the trial of Scots subjects accused of offences against the laws of their own country. He was commonly a great noble of the district, his office in early times being often hereditary; and, as such noble, he had power of life and death, so that the need for holding special courts was little felt. A pointed Scots anecdote pictures an angry Highlander “banning” the Lords of Session as “kinless loons,” because, though some were relatives, they had decided a case against him. These Wardens were _not_ “kinless loons,” and they often used their office to favour a friend or depress a foe. On small pretext