fathom radius and all whose houses chanced to lie within its circumference, whether men or women young or old, whole or bedridden, mothers great with child or babies at the breast, were indifferently fined the sum of three dollars each, a large sum for a Malayan villager of those days to be called upon to pay, and producing, from the king's point of view, a refreshingly big total, when all heads had been counted, for in the neighbourhood of Kota Bharu the people herd together as closely as kine in a byre.
This system of wholesale muleting was recognized in Kelantan as having several advantages attaching to it. In the first place, it did something to enhance the revenues of the king, which was a matter of no- ment; and for the humbler folk, if a man chanced to have a quarrel with a neighbour, with whom he was otherwise unable to get even. he could punish him by the simple process of leaving a corpse at his front door. In a land where human life was as cheap as it used to be in Kelantan, this was not a difficult matter to arrange, and if the corpse chanced to be that of yet another enemy, two birds, so to speak, could be killed with a single stone. Which is economical.
