In the century preceding the Union of the Crowns, the international code was very highly developed, and the procedure was strictly defined. As England was the larger nation, and as its law was in a more highly developed and more firm and settled state, its methods were followed on the whole. The injured party sent a bill of complaint to his own Warden; and the bill, even as put into official form, was simplicity itself. It said that A. complained upon B. for that--and then followed a list of the stolen goods, or the wrongs done. It was verified by the complainant’s oath, and thereafter sent to the opposite Warden, whose duty was to arrest the accused or at least to give him notice to attend on the next Day of Truce. [One famous fray (June 17, 1575) is commemorated in _The Raid of the Reidswire_, a ballad setting forth many features of a Day of Truce.] The Wardens agreed on the Day, and the place was usually in the northern kingdom, where most of the defendants lived. The meeting was proclaimed in all the market towns on either side. The parties, each accompanied by troops of friends, came in; and a messenger from the English side demanded that assurance should be kept till sunrise the following day. This was granted by the Scots, who proceeded to send a similar message, and were presently secured by a similar assurance. Then each Warden held up his hand as a sign of faith, and made proclamation of the Day to his own side (the evident purpose of this elaborate ritual was to keep North and South from flying, on sight, at each other’s throats). The English Warden now came to his Scots brother, whom he saluted and embraced; and the business of the Day of Truce (or Diet, or Day Marche, or Warden Court, as it was variously called) began. That business was commerce, and pleasure, as well as law. Merchants come with their wares; booths were run up; a brisk trade ran in articles tempting to the savage eye. Both sides were ready for the moment to forget their enmities. If they could not fight, they could play, and football was ever your Borderers’ favourite pastime (from the desperate mauls which mark that exhilarating sport as practised along the Border line, one fancies that the “auld riding bluid” still stirs in the veins of the players). Gambling, too, was a popular excitement. There was much of feasting and drinking, and sure some Border Homer, poor and old and blind, even as him of Chios, was there to charm and melt his rude hearers with the storied loves and wars of other days. The conclave fairly hummed with pleasure and excitement. Yet with such inflammable material, do you wonder that the meeting ended now and again in most admired disorder?