this period, may be gathered from a proviso in the same law, that even if the king had “granted grace” to the offending parties, his pardon was of no avail unless it had been issued with the full knowledge of the kindred of the slaughtered man, who otherwise retained their legal right of vengeance on the homicide.[298] The liability of the kindred, however, must have enabled the jurisprudence of the age, in ordinary cases, to dispense with witnesses. The responsibility of the theft, or homicide, was thrown upon the district; and if the responsible parties failed to shift it elsewhere, the law visited them with the penalty. Publicity was the test of innocence, secresy of guilty intent. In the olden time, all who crossed the _mark_ openly were welcomed as guests, safe and secure in the protection of the whole people, amongst whom they were sacred characters; but he who failed to give due notice of his approach, was slain at once as a foe or a thief; and in later days, the magnate travelling through the royal forest might always strike a deer or two if he first sounded his horn, to give due notice to the forester of his intention. He who slew his foe in open strife, proclaimed the deed, and told where the body lay--sometimes even if he left his weapon sticking in the wound--was never reckoned as a murderer, simply bearing the feud with his kindred, or paying the wergild; whilst by Old Saxon law, a _murderer_ was fined nine times the ordinary mulct, his kinsmen only paying one-third of the usual wergild as their share of the fine, and being released from all consequences of the feud; evidently on the principle of their ignorance of the _secret_ intentions of the murderer.[299] So, at a later date, it was the duty of the man who claimed his own cattle, or “impounded” that of another for debt, to proclaim it openly in the neighbourhood; when his neighbour, thus made aware of his intentions, might stop him if in the wrong, and assist or clear him on oath if right. Thus, publicity was necessary in all the transactions of social life; and as its neglect was assumed to imply a guilty purpose, and the kin, or the neighbourhood, was the joint security for all its members, it would naturally become a legal axiom of the age, that the kinsmen, or neighbours, were responsible that such publicity had been complied with, and liable to pay the penalty of any neglect.