If, after the official permission had been obtained, the enemy died before the revenge could be taken, it had to be reported with satisfactory proofs of his death. Such procedure was considered necessary, because after the official registration, the avenger took leave of his lord, who assisted him in every way and made him parting presents, and the avenger naturally set out full of hope; but it sometimes happened that when he was unable to find his enemy after a long search and at the same time his purse became lighter every day, he longed for home and with his first resolution now gone, he grew anxious to give up the fruitless search. In such cases he might come home, pretending that his enemy was dead. And it was to prevent such fraud that satisfactory proofs of the enemy’s death were required to free the avenger from the duty which he had voluntarily undertaken. The avenger was usually the murdered man’s inferior, although sometimes he was his superior in position. He was in most cases his son, younger brother, relative, servant, pupil, or intimate friend. The person upon whom vengeance was to be wreaked was not necessarily a bad man. In the early years of the Tokugawa régime, duels were of frequent occurrence among the samurai; they seldom discussed which were right and which wrong in a dispute. If there was a difference, one would exclaim, “Come, let us fight it out;” to which the other would as lightly express his willingness, and they drew their swords on the spot. Thus, a duel was an appeal to arms made by mutual agreement; and the vanquished had no cause of resentment against the victor. Yet his surviving family often took up his cause and revenged themselves upon his adversary. Sometimes justice was on the enemy’s side and the avenger was entirely in the wrong. Such cases were unavoidable when vendetta had the moral sanction of the nation and was practically a duty imposed upon the nearest relative of the murdered man. Although the vendetta may be said to have been concluded when the avenger had killed his man, yet the avenger himself was sometimes looked upon as the enemy by his victim’s family, who, thereupon, commenced a vendetta against him. Next, the first avenger’s family would upon his death take revenge upon the second avenger, and so on, so that the feud would become as interminable as a Corsican vendetta. To put a stop to such endless vendettas, the Tokugawa Government strictly prohibited secondary vendettas.