_Master._--The proper definition of “murder” is the secret killing of a man whose slayer is unknown.... In the original condition of the realm after the Conquest, the conquered English who were left used to lie secretly in wait for the distrusted and hated Norman people, and everywhere, when opportunity offered, killed them by stealth in the woods and in remote places; and when, to avenge them, kings and their ministers had for years with exquisite kinds of torture cruelly entreated the English, and the latter none the less had not altogether unlearned the habit, the following plan was devised; the so-called “hundred,” in which a Norman was found thus killed, when the compasser of his death was not found and through flight could not be traced, was condemned to pay a large sum of tested silver to the treasury, some 36_l._, some 44_l._, according to the size of the district and the frequency of the slaying. They say that this was done in order that the infliction of a general penalty might ensure safety for travellers, and that all men might make haste to punish a crime so great, or to bring to justice the man through whom so enormous a loss fell on the whole neighbourhood.... _Disciple._--Ought not the secret killing of an Englishman to be reputed as murder equally with that of a Norman? _M._--No, not by the original institution, as you have heard; but now, through the dwelling together of the English and the Normans and by intermarriage, the races have become so mixed that one can hardly tell to-day--I speak of freemen--who is of English and who of Norman birth; except in the case of those bound to the soil who are called villeins, who are not free to change their condition against the will of their lords. On that account almost always when any one is found so slain to-day, it is punished as murder, except in the case of those whose servile condition, as we have said, is apparent by obvious proofs. _D._--I wonder that a prince of such unique excellence and a man of so stern a mould should have shown such mercy towards the English people, conquered and distrusted by him, that he not only saved harmless the husbandmen by whom agriculture might be practised, but left even to the nobles their estates and wide possessions.