"
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.
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