during his whole life in private or public warfare, and on whom
he had inflicted many calamities, while he had sustained at their
hands not a few. His love and devotion to the King was like the
vivid affection of the old English mastiff to his master, leaving
him churlish and inaccessible to all others even towards those to
whom he was indifferent--and rough and dangerous to any against
whom he entertained a prejudice. De Vaux had never observed
without jealousy and displeasure his King exhibit any mark of
courtesy or favour to the wicked, deceitful, and ferocious race
born on the other side of a river, or an imaginary line drawn
through waste and wilderness; and he even doubted the success of
a Crusade in which they were suffered to bear arms, holding them
in his secret soul little better than the Saracens whom he came
to combat. It may be added that, as being himself a blunt and
downright Englishman, unaccustomed to conceal the slightest
movement either of love or of dislike, he accounted the fair-spoken courtesy which the Scots had learned,
either from
imitation of their frequent allies, the French, or which might
have arisen from their own proud and reserved character, as a
false and astucious mark of the most dangerous designs against
their neighbours, over whom he believed, with genuine English
confidence, they could, by fair manhood, never obtain any
advantage.

Yet, though De Vaux entertained these sentiments concerning his
Northern neighbours, and extended them, with little mitigation,
even to such as had assumed the Cross, his respect for the King,
and a sense of the duty imposed by his vow as a Crusader,
prevented him from displaying them otherwise than by regularly
shunning all intercourse with his Scottish brethren-at-arms as