Capitola was the first to recover her presence of mind; the instinct of the huntress possessed her; starting forward, she exclaimed:
"Pursue him! catch him! come with me! Cowards, will you let a robber and murderer escape?" and she ran out and overtook the outlaw in the middle of the hall. With the agile leap of a little terrier she sprang up behind him, seized the thick collar of his pea-jacket with both hands, and, drawing up her feet, hung there with all her weight, crying:
"Help! murder! murder! help! Come to my aid! I've caught Black Donald!"
He could have killed her instantly in any one of a dozen ways. He could have driven in her temples with a blow of his sledge-hammer fist; he could have broken her neck with the grip of his iron fingers; he only wished to shake her off without hurting her—a difficult task, for there she hung, a dead weight, at the collar of his coat at the back of his neck.
"Oh, very well!" he cried, laughing aloud! "Such adhesiveness I never saw! You stick to me like a wife to her husband. So if you won't let go, I shall have to take you along, that's all! So here I go like Christian with his bundle of sin on his back!"
And loosing the upper button of his pea-jacket so as to give him more breath, and, putting down his peddler's pack to relieve himself as much as possible, the outlaw strode through the hall door, down the steps, and down the evergreen avenue leading to the woods.
Capitola still clinging to the back of his coat-collar, with feet drawn up, a dead weight, and still crying:
"Help! Murder! I've caught Black Donald, and I'll die before I'll let him go!"
"You're determined to be an outlaw's bride, that's certain! Well, I've no particular objection!" cried Black Donald, roaring with laughter as he strode on.
It was a "thing to see, not hear"—that brave, rash, resolute imp clinging like a terrier, or a crab, or a briar, on to the back of that gigantic ruffian, whom, if she had no strength to stop, she was determined not to release.