"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.