Let us try, then, in spite of some confusion in the text, to make out the probable meaning of the action described. Clause 1 makes it clear that the first public step taken on the part of the slayer was to go to the Mallus with twelve co-swearers, who with him pledge their faith that he has given up everything, above ground or below it, towards the wergeld. There must have been previous negotiations with the kinsmen of the slain, and a stay of vengeance must have been conceded on the understanding that if possible the wergeld will be paid. Having thus obtained legal security for a time, the next stage in the proceeding is one between the slayer and his kinsmen, without whose help he cannot pay the wergeld. [Sidenote: The family gathering to arrange for payment of the rest of the wergeld.] The graphic details of the second clause seem to involve the presence of a family gathering met within the enclosure containing the house of the slayer, and, for anything we know, other houses of near relations. In this enclosure the kindred have met to deal with a family catastrophe in which they themselves are involved as well as the slayer. Even if they have to find only their half of the wergeld, fifty head of cattle from the family herd or their separate herds, as the case may be, must be to them a matter of importance. Standing on the threshold of the house from the four corners of which the slayer has gathered a handful of earth, he throws it over the representatives of his paternal and maternal kindred. He has done his part, and now the responsibility rests on them. The vagueness and difficulty of the next clause result from a text which has probably been tampered with. But with the help of Tit. LXII. and the addition of Tit. CI., giving further details, it becomes at least partly intelligible. The rule that the payment of wergeld was made by the relatives in the same proportions as they would receive it, if one of their kinsmen had been slain, is so general that we may fairly assume that it was followed also by the Salic Franks. We have seen that according to these clauses, if a father was killed, the sons took the first half of the wergeld, and that the other half was divided between three sets of _proximiores_--the three parentillæ or sets of relatives of both paternal and maternal kindreds--in certain proportions. The slayer and his sons should pay the first half, and his father and brothers apparently help them to pay it. The other part ought to fall upon the three parentillæ nearest of kin on both the paternal and maternal side. So that Clause 3 becomes partly intelligible. ‘If the father and brothers have already paid’ what the slayer could not pay of the first half, the earth has to be thrown upon the three parentillæ nearest of kin of the mother’s kindred and the three parentillæ nearest of kin of the father’s kindred. These seem to be the ‘proximiores’ who should pay the other half.