He was a difficult dog to capture and his ransom must be in proportion to his resistance.

There was a terrible tradition of a lady who had haggled about the sum demanded and had received her dog's head in a parcel.

Miss Barrett was eager to part with her six guineas and rescue her faithful companion from misery.

Was this an occasion for preaching from ethical heights the sin of making a composition with evil-doers?
Yet Browning, still "a fighter" and armed with desperate logic, must needs declaim vehemently against the iniquity of such a bargain.

It is something to rejoice at that he was dexterously worsted in argument, being compelled to admit that if Italian banditti were to carry off his "Ba," he would pay down every farthing he might have in the world to recover her, and this before he entered on that chase of fifty years which was not to terminate until he had shot down with his own hand the receiver of the infamous bribe.
The journey of Miss Barrett to Pisa having been for the present abandoned, friendship, now acknowledged to be more than friendship, resumed its accustomed ways.