The international duties of the Wardens were those of conference with each other, and the redressing of approved wrongs, which wrongs were usually done in raids or forays. Of these I must now give some account. The smaller Border chieftain dwelt in a peel tower, stuck on the edge of a rock or at the break of a torrent. It was a rude structure with a projecting battlement. A stair or ladder even held its two stories together, and about it lay a barnkin--a space of some sixty feet encompassed by a wall; the laird’s followers dwelling in huts hard by. For small parties the tower was self-sufficient in defence, and if it lay in the way of a hostile army, the laird was duly warned by scouts or beacon fires, and withdrew to some fastness of rock or marsh, carrying his few valuables, driving his live stock before him, leaving the foeman nothing to burn and nothing to take away. With his followers he lived on milk, meat, and barley, together with the spoils of the forest and stream. The marchmen are reported temperate--no doubt from necessity. Their kine, recruited by forays, were herded in a secluded part of the glen, and when the herd waxed small, and the laird was tired of hunting, and his women lusted after new ornament, and old wounds were healed, and the retainers were growing rusty, then it was time for a raid. Was the laird still inactive? In struck his lady’s sharper wit, and the story goes that Wat Scott of Harden was ever and anon served with a dish which, being uncovered, revealed a pair of _polished_ spurs. Thus his wife, Mary Scott, the “Flower of Yarrow”--a very practical person, despite her romantic name--urged him to profitable rapine. Well: his riders were bidden to a trysting-place; and hither, armed in jacks (which are leathern jerkins plated with iron) and mounted on small but active and hardy horses, they repaired at evenfall. The laird and some superior henchmen wore also sleeves of mail and steel bonnets; all had long lances, swords, axes, and in later times such rude firearms--serpentines, half-haggs, harquebusses, currys, cullivers, and hand-guns are mentioned--as were to be had. In the mirk night the reivers crossed the Border; and to do this unseen was no easy matter. The whole line from Berwick to Carlisle was patrolled by setters and searchers, watchers and overseers, having sleuth-hounds to track the invader; also, many folk held lands by the tenure of cornage, and by blowing horns must warn the land of coming raids. Where the frontier line was a river the fords were carefully guarded; those held unnecessary were staked up; narrow passes were blocked in divers ways, so that chief element in Border craft was the knowledge of paths and passes through moorland and moss, and of nooks and coigns of security deep in the mountain glens.