h he might incur, in nursing a patient so intractable, and whose
displeasure was so perilous.

Sir Thomas was the Lord of Gilsland, in Cumberland, and in an age
when surnames and titles were not distinctly attached, as now, to the
individuals who bore them, he was called by the Normans the Lord de
Vaux; and in English by the Saxons, who clung to their native language,
and were proud of the share of Saxon blood in this renowned warrior's
veins, he was termed Thomas, or, more familiarly, Thom of the Gills,
or Narrow Valleys, from which his extensive domains derived their
well-known appellation.

This chief had been exercised in almost all the wars, whether waged
betwixt England and Scotland, or amongst the various domestic factions
which then tore the former country asunder, and in all had been
distinguished, as well from his military conduct as his personal
prowess. He was, in other respects, a rude soldier, blunt and careless
in his bearing, and taciturn--nay, almost sullen--in his habits of
society, and seeming, at least, to disclaim all knowledge of policy and
of courtly art. There were men, however, who pretended to look deeply
into character, who asserted that the Lord de Vaux was not less shrewd
and aspiring than he was blunt and bold, and who thought that, while he
assimilated himself to the king's own character of blunt hardihood, it
was, in some degree at least, with an eye to establish his favour, and
to gratify his own hopes of deep-laid ambition. But no one cared to
thwart his schemes, if such he had, by rivalling him in the dangerous
occupation of daily attendance on the sick-bed of a patient whose
disease was pronounced infectious, and more especially when it was
remembered that the patient was Coeur de Lion, suffering under all the
furious impatience of a soldier withheld from battle, and a sovereign
sequestered from authority; and the common soldiers, at least in the
English army, were generally of opinion that De Vaux attended on
the King like comrade upon comrade, in the honest and disinterested
frankness of military friendship contracted between the partakers of
daily dangers.

It was on the decline of a Syrian day that Richard lay on his couch of
sickness, loathing it as much in mind as his illness made it irksome to
his body. His bright blue eye, which at all times shone with uncommon
keenness and splendour, had its vivacity augmented by fever and mental
impatience, and glanced from among his curl