If the murderer is caught soon, he is killed; but if he can stave off the day of justice, he escapes with a fine.
When private property has developed, the system of blood-fines becomes most elaborate.

Amongst the Iroquois the manslayer must redeem himself from death by means of no less than sixty presents to the injured kin; one to draw the axe out of the wound, a second to wipe the blood away, a third to restore peace to the land, and so forth.

According to the collective principle, the clansmen on one side share the price of atonement, and on the other side must tax themselves in order to make it up.

Shares are on a scale proportionate to degrees of relationship.
Or, again, further nice calculations are required, if it is sought to adjust the gross amount of the payment to the degree of guilt.

Hence it is not surprising that, when a more or less barbarous people, such as the Anglo-Saxons, came to require a written law, it should be almost entirely taken up by regulations about blood-fines, that had become too complicated for the people any longer to keep in their heads.
So far we have been considering the law of blood-revenge as purely an affair between the clans concerned; the rest of the tribal public keeping aloof, very much in the style of the Andamanese bystanders who retire into the jungle when there is a prospect of a row.