Perhaps several years later B returns from Manchuria. He has money and wishes to redeem his land. He soon discovers that it has been redeemed by his brother A. His own rights of redemption, however, are still valid; he applies to A for the return of the land for the same price at which it was originally mortgaged to C. A must comply. If B has been absent many years and meanwhile the land has greatly risen in value, A will probably give it up with a very bad grace. If the original mortgage-deed was badly drawn up or there are some doubts about what actually took place, A will perhaps refuse to surrender the land at all unless or until he is ordered to do so by the court. Litigation concerning transactions of this kind has been common in Weihaiwei of recent years. A man who mortgaged his land many years ago, perhaps at a time of famine and scarcity, for a ridiculously small sum, returns from abroad to find his land worth five or more times what it was worth then. He is naturally eager to redeem it, while the person in whose hands it now is--whether the original mortgagee or one of the mortgagor's family--is equally eager to retain it. The court in such cases naturally supports local custom, though there are sometimes bewildering complications which render it no easy matter to give a rigidly just decision. Deeds of sale and mortgage of real property used to be drawn up in an excessively vague and slipshod manner--the very boundaries of the land being either not mentioned at all or inaccurately; moreover nearly all such deeds were "white" deeds--that is to say they had not been put through the formal process of registration which would turn them into legal documents. To remedy this state of things (which was not to be wondered at in a district where ignorant peasants do their own conveyancing without legal assistance) certain recommendations were made some years ago which resulted in the adoption of a new system whereby all intending sellers and mortgagors of land are obliged to use an officially-stamped deed-form, on which spaces are provided for the proper description of land-areas and other necessary particulars. The forms are numbered and kept in counterfoil-books, and no deed can evade registration except through the negligence of Government clerks. Government has in this simple procedure a small but unfailing source of revenue, the magistrates find their labours in the court simplified, and the people are greatly benefited by having more satisfactory title-deeds to their lands (or rather proofs of legal purchase and mortgage) than they ever had before.