If, again, one had a mind to lose 80 shillings of gold, he need but to commit the offence of 'meerworphin,' a word which will puzzle you somewhat, till you find it to signify 'mare warping,' to warp, or throw one's neighbour off his mare or horse. A blow with the closed fist, again, costs three shillings: but one with the open hand, six. The latter is an insult as well as an injury. A freeman is struck with the fist, but a slave with the palm of the hand. Breaking a man's head costs six solidi. But if one had broken his skull, then (as in the Alemannic laws) one must pay twelve shillings, and twelve more for each fracture up to three--after which they are not counted. But a piece of bone must come out which will make a sound when thrown into a shield twelve feet off; which feet are to be measured by that of a man of middle stature. From which strange law may be deduced, not only the toughness of the Lombard brain-pan, but the extreme necessity of defining each particular, in order to prevent subsequent disputes, followed up by a blood-feud, which might be handed down from father to son. For by accepting the legal fine, the injured man expressly renounced his primaeval right of feud. Then follow some curious laws in favour of the masters of Como, Magistri Comacenes, who seem to have been a guild of architects, perhaps the original germ of the great society of free-masons--belonging, no doubt, to the Roman population--who were settled about the lake of Como, and were hired, on contract, (as the laws themselves express,) to build for the Lombards, who of course had no skill to make anything beyond a skin- tent or a log-hall. Then follow laws against incendiaries; a fine for damage by accidental house-fire, if the offender have carried fire more than nine feet from the hearth; a law against leaving a fire alight on a journey, as in the Australian colonies now. Then laws to protect mills; important matters in those days, being unknown to the Lombards before their entrance into Italy.