In falling his foot remained in the hanging stirrup. The well-trained cavalry horse stood perfectly still, though trembling in a panic of terror, from which he might at any moment start to run, dragging the helpless body after him. Capitola saw this danger, and not being cruel, she tempered justice with mercy, threw down her spent pistol, dismounted from her horse, went up to the fallen man, disengaged his foot from the stirrup, and, taking hold of his shoulders, tried with all her might to drag the still breathing form from the dusty road where it lay in danger of being run over by wagons, to the green bank, where it might lie in comparative safety. But that heavy form was too much for her single strength. And, calling her terrified groom to assist her, they removed the body. Capitola then remounted her horse and galloped rapidly into the village, and up to the "ladies' entrance" of the hotel, where, after sending for the proprietor she said: "I have just been shooting Craven Le Noir for slandering me; he lies by the roadside at the entrance of the village; you had better send somebody to pick him up." "Miss!" cried the astonished inn-keeper. Capitola distinctly repeated her words and then, leaving the inn-keeper, transfixed with consternation, she crossed the street and entered a magistrate's office, where a little, old gentleman, with a pair of green spectacles resting on his hooked nose, sat at a writing-table, giving some directions to a constable, who was standing hat in hand before him. Capitola waited until this functionary had his orders and a written paper, and had left the office, and the magistrate was alone, before she walked up to the desk and stood before him. "Well, well, young woman! Well, well, what do you want?" inquired the old gentleman, impatiently looking up from folding his papers. "I have come to give myself up for shooting Craven Le Noir, who slandered me," answered Capitola, quietly. The old man let fall his hands full of papers, raised his head and stared at her over the tops of his green spectacles. "What did you say, young woman?" he asked, in the tone of one who doubted his own ears. "I say that I have forestalled an arrest by coming here to give myself up for the shooting of a dastard who slandered, insulted and refused to give me satisfaction," answered Capitola, very distinctly. "Am I awake? Do I hear aright? Do you mean to say that you have killed a man?" asked the dismayed magistrate. "Oh, I can't say as to the killing! I shot him off his horse and then sent Mr. Merry and his men to pick him up, while I came here to answer for myself!" "Unfortunate girl! And how can you answer for such a dreadful deed?" exclaimed the utterly confounded magistrate. "Oh, as to the dreadfulness of the deed, that depends on circumstances," said Cap, "and I can answer for it very well! He made addresses to me. I refused him. He slandered me. I challenged him. He insulted me. I shot him!"