Madame Tallafferr, in the glory of black silk, the Pinckney lace, the Pemberton diamond, and accompanied by that fat relic of slavery, Black Sally, had been taking the air genteelly on a bench when the disturbance grated upon her sensitive ear.

“What is that rabble about, Sally?” she inquired.

The aged negress reconnoitered.  “Reckon dey’s ridin’ a gentmun on a rail,” she reported.

“A gentleman, Sally?  Impossible.  No gentleman would endure such an affront.  Look again.”

“Yessum.  It’s dat po’ white trash dey call Plooie.  Mainded yo’ umbrella oncet.”

“My umbrella-mender!” (The mere fact that the victim had once tinkered for her a decrepit parasol entitled him in her feudal mind to the high protection of the Tallafferr tradition.) “Tell them to desist at once.”

Apologetically but shrewdly Sally opined that the neighborhood of the advancing mob was “no place foh a niggah.”

With perfect faith in the powers of her superior she added:  “You desist ’em, mist’ess.”

Sally’s confidence in her mistress was equaled or perhaps even excelled by her mistress’s confidence in herself.

Leaning upon her cane and attended by the faithful though terrified servitor, Madame Tallafferr rustled forward.  She took her stand upon the brink of the fountain in almost the exact spot where she had disarmed MacLachan, the tailor, drunk, songful, and suicidal, two years before.  Since that feat an almost mythologic awe had attached itself to her locally.

She waited, small and thin, hawk-eyed, imperious, and tempered like steel.  The ring of tempered steel, too, was in her voice when, at the proper moment, she raised it.

“What are you doing?”

The clamor of the mob died down.  The sight of Horatia (I beg her pardon humbly, Madame Tallafferr) in the path smote them with misgivings.  As in Macaulay’s immortal, if somewhat jingly epic, “those behind cried ‘Forward’ and those before cried ’Back’!” That single hale and fiery old lady held them.  No more could those two hundred ruffians have defied the challenge of her contemptuous eyes than they could have advanced into the flaming doors of a furnace.

A cautious voice from the rear inquired:  “Who’s the dame?”

“She’s a witch,” conjectured some one.

“It’s the Duchess,” said another, giving her the local title of veneration.

“It’s the lady that shot the tailor,” proclaimed an awe-stricken bystander. (Legend takes strange twists in Our Square as elsewhere.) Some outlander, ignorant of our traditions, prescribed in a malevolent squeak: 

“T’row ’er in the drink.”

“Who spoke?” said Madame Tallafferr, crisp and clear.

Silence.  Then the sound of objurgations as the advocate frantically resisted well-meant efforts to thrust him into undesirable prominence.  Finally a miniature eruption outward from the mob’s edge, followed by a glimpse of a shadowy figure departing at full speed.  The Duchess leveled a bony finger at Inky Mike, the nearest figure personally known to her, who began a series of contortions suggestive of a desire to crawl into his own pocket.