STRANGERS in Our Square stop and stare at No. 17. In itself the house is unremarkable; a dull, brown rectangle with a faintly mildewed air about the cornices. It is this sign on the front which attracts the startled notice of the wayfarer:—

To us of the Square the placard is a commonplace, and the Angel of Death just Boggs, a chunky, bristly little man with gold teeth and a weak, meek, peanut-whistle voice, who conducts not a private bomb factory or a suicide club.

Taxmun formed romantics hopefully surmise upon a first reading, but a worthy though humble enterprise of hygiene and cleanliness more specifically set forth in the legend running, crimson, across the top of his business card:—

Once in the long ago that explicit announcement had flamed upon the house front. It yielded to the more dignified form when Madam Tallafferr took Mr. Boggs's top floor. She said that it was objectionable and that she could not live over it, and the landlord, duly impressed, sacrificed his prized alliteration rather than lose a lodger so elegant and aristocratic. Mr. Boggs had a vast, albeit distant, reverence for aristocracy, and he recognized in Madam Tallafferr a true exponent. So the sign came down and she went up. With her went her furniture, scanty but magnificent, a silver-inlaid lock box locally credited with safeguarding the Pemberton family diamonds, Sempronius, who was fat and black and a cat, and Old Sally, who was fat and black and a thief. For five years Madam Tallafferr dwelt above the lethal Boggs, and at the end of that period Our Square knew hardly more of her than on the day of her arrival. She was polite, but resolutely aloof as befitted her station in life.

For Mr. Boggs's lodger was all that is most glorious in Southern lineage. Her full style and title was Madam Rachel Pinckney Pemberton Tallafferr, with two Is, two fs, and two rs, if you valued her favor. She was passionately devoted to the Lost Cause, and belonged to no less than seven “Daughters-of” organizations with sumptuous stationery. Mr. Boggs was very proud of her mail. He said she had the swellest correspondence in Our Square. When letters arrived bearing her name without the requisite double Is, fs, and rs, they were invariably returned to the postman indorsed in a firm, fine hand: “No such individual known here.” But if the letters appeared important, the kindly and admiring Angel of Death used to intercept them and supply the missing consonants from his own inkwell. In this way he accumulated considerable information, and was able to apprise Our Square that his lodger was superstitious, subscribed to a dream magazine, and belonged to a Spirit Guidance Group. He darkly suspected the spirits of giving her bad advice about investments.

In person Madam Tallafferr was spare, tall, and straight. Her age when she first came to us was, to borrow caution from the war-zone censorship, “somewhere in the sixties,” though to Old Sally she was still “my young mist'ess.” Age had sharpened her personality, like her features, to a fine point. She was, I think, the most serene, incisive, and authoritative person I have ever encountered. Her speech was precise and trenchant. She dressed always in elegant, rustling black. Mr. Boggs said that she walked like a duchess. Quite likely. Though where Mr. Boggs got his data, I don't know. Our Square is not extensively haunted by persons of ducal rank. However, she became known to the locality, behind her back, as the Duchess. She and Old Sally were supposed to live in sumptuous luxury above the sign of the Destroyer. They had come to Our Square for their sojourn because, generations before in the days of its glory, madam's maternal grandfather had visited a distant cousin in that same No. 17. From beneath the ominous signboard she made occasional excursions, going westward and uptown, sometimes actually in an automobile, and always escorted by Old Sally. It was understood (from the boastful Mr. Boggs) that on such occasions his lodger was going into Society.

Once, that Our Square knew of, she put her ante-bellum principles into practice. She undertook disciplinary measures upon Old Sally, who in a moment of exaltation had been bragging indiscreetly of past glories “back in Fuhginia.” With a light but serviceable cane she corrected that indiscretion. Yes, in this emancipated twentieth century, among the populous, crowded habitations of our little metropolitan community, within earshot of Terry the Cop, the conscientious and logical slave-owner committed the startling anachronism of beating her slave. Hearing the resultant groans, Mr. Boggs, the lethal, rushed up to his top floor in great perturbation of spirit and burst in upon the finale of the performance. From what he could observe the castigation was purely formal and innocuous and the outcries merely a concession to what was expected and proper in the circumstances. But when he made his presence known, the Duchess in few cold and measured terms explained to him his exact purport and significance in the cosmic scheme, which he promptly perceived to bean approximate zero. “She wizened me up,” said the Angel of Death, “like a last season's roach.”

One after another she wizened us all up sufficiently to convince Our Square that she desired no personal share in its loosely communal, kindly, and village-like life.

But though aloof she was not alien. As befitted her name and station, she could in time of need descend from her remote Olympus above the insecticidal Mr. Boggs and lend a hand. The first occasion was when a sudden and disastrous spring epidemic of that Herod of diseases, diphtheria, swept down upon Our Square, bringing panic in its train, an insane and bestial panic which barred doors against the authorities, against help, against medicine, against even our fiery and beloved Little Red Doctor, who stands like a bulwark between us and death and the fear of death. Then the Duchess appeared. She consulted briefly with the Little Red Doctor. She put on the black silk of splendor, the Pinckney laces and the Pemberton diamonds, and thus girded for the fray went forth, a spare, thin-lipped, female St. George, against our local dragon. Wherever that sane and confident presence appeared, panic gave way to reason and mutiny to obedience. There were no heroics. She nursed no dying children, saved no sudden emergency. She simply restored and enforced courage through the authority of a valiant and assured personality. Just before the Little Red Doctor collapsed, at the close of the crisis, he delivered his estimate of her.

“Cold nerve and tradition. Our Square ought to put up a statue to her—in steel.”

Against which may be set off the Duchess's complacent and bland summing up of the Little Red Doctor:—

“He seems a worthy young man.”

In retort, Mr. Boggs, for once forgetting his reverential attitude, indignantly piped: “God give you understanding!” The Duchess merely lifted her eyebrows fractionally. Being a Pemberton by birth and a Tallafferr by name, she perceived no necessity of understanding lesser forms of life.

Yet she possessed understanding, too, and of a subtle, fine, and profound kind. Otherwise she could never have done for Schepstein what she did when Schep-stein's twenty-year-old Metta killed herself through taking poison tablets (by mistake of course, as the Little Red Doctor perjuriously certified). In his hour of lonely grief and shame, Our Square turned its back upon the little cross-eyed, cross-grained, agnostic trafficker in old debts, old furniture, old books, old stamps, old silver, and anything else old which he could buy from the uninformed and sell to the covetous; not because he had at one time or another got the better of most of us in some deal and was the best-hated habitant within the four inclosing streets, but because we did not know what to do for him and feared his savage and cynical rebuffs. But when the furtive hearse and the one carriage for Schepstein, which was to have been the whole of little Metta's funeral, drew up at night before the Schepstein flat, Madam Rachel Pinckney Pemberton Tal-lafferr descended her steps, and crossed Our Square, rustling and in the high estate of black silk and lace. She must have been watching. Behind her waddled Old Sally with an armful of white roses. They met Schepstein at the foot of his steps, following his dead. As the casket passed her, Madame Tallafferr took the wealth of bloom from the servant and scattered its snowy purity above the girl. At that the face of Schepstein, which had been cold lead-gray, changed and flushed and softened, and he staggered suddenly where he stood and might have fallen had not that strong old woman thrust an arm under his to help him on his way. So two mourners went in the lone carriage to little Metta's funeral.

Only long afterward was this known to Our Square. What established the Duchess as a local heroine and an Olympian controller of destinies was her handling of MacLachan the Tailor. MacLachan, on his black, alcoholic days, was wont to sing “The Cork Leg” under circumstances which I have set forth elsewhere. On this occasion he sang it, sitting on the coping of the fountain with his legs in the water, and beating time with a revolver which might or might not have been loaded. Nobody knew at the time. Regarding MacLachan there was no such room for doubt. Between stanzas he would announce his purpose of presently ending all his troubles with a bullet, previous to which, candidates for coffins would be considered in the order of their applications. In the natural logic of events this was a case for Terry the Cop, but Polyglot Elsa of the Elite Restaurant had early observed MacLachan's ready weapon, and with more cunning than conscience had dispatched the intrepid Terry to the farther end of the beat upon a purely fictitious Italian riot. For reasons of her own she did not wish Terry punctured. Hence Our Square, deprived of the official protection to which we were entitled, lurked about in the night shadows, watching the balladist from a respectful distance and wondering what would come next.

The Duchess came next. She rustled stiffly up to the fountain and bade MacLachan hold his peace. Old Sally followed with a market basket. MacLachan elevated his voice a pitch.

bellowed MacLachan. “I am not aweer,” he added, still rhythmic, though with a change of meter, “that now and here, you possess any legal authority in this Squeer!”

The Duchess pointed a stiletto-like finger at MacLachan. “You are a rum-wastrel,” she pronounced severely.

MacLachan pointed his revolver at the Duchess, though rather waveringly. “I am,” said he, “and proud of it.”

“You will do some harm with that firearm.”

“I will,” said MacLachan, “and glad to do it.”

“Go home to your bed and pray,” ordered the stiff old lady contemptuously.

MacLachan regarded her gravely. “Fly, witch,” he said. “Awa' wi' ye on yer broomstick. I have a silver bullet for yer life.”

“Give me that pistol,” she directed and stretched out a hand for it.

Quietly but firmly MacLachan shot her. At the same moment Old Sally hit him expertly on the head with a bottle which she took from her market basket. MacLachan slumped forward and took his whirling thoughts carefully between his two hands. “I ha' done wrong,” he presently concluded. “I ha' murdered my aged an' respectable aunt in cold blood. Tak' my weepon an' hale me to the gallus.”

He passed his revolver over to a firm grasp. It was that of the Duchess. She was bleeding very slightly, the merest trickle, from the ear which MacLachan's bullet had grazed.

“Do not strike him again,” she bade Old Sally, composedly, and that faithful amazon dropped her bottle and lost fifty cents' worth of catchup.

“Come home before you get into trouble,” was the lady's command to the now cowed and repentant tailor.

Whimpering and rubbing his head, he suffered himself to be marched back to his Home of Fashion. So promptly was the retirement executed that Terry the Cop never knew (officially) what had taken place. Unofficially all of Our Square knew. And the following day a deputation of us marched MacLachan around to No. 17 to apologize. As we stood on the stairway awaiting her pleasure, we could hear Madam Rachel Pinckney Pemberton Tallafferr directing Old Sally to inform the deputation that she had not, to the best of her recollection, evinced any intention of receiving on that particular day, and that she sent her compliments to us, and was not at home.

“That's the high-toned way of saying she don't want to see us,” chirped the admiring Mr. Boggs between gratification and apology. “Aristocrat to the finger tips! Haven't I always told you so?”

He had, to the uttermost wearying of the flesh. But there came a time when he boasted less assuredly of his top-floor grandeur. To the little circle at the Elite Restaurant it became evident that something was preying upon the blithe spirit of the Angel of Death, something having to do with his Duchess. One evening, in a burst of confidence, he unburdened himself to the Little Red Doctor and me. Madam was, he feared, losing interest in the lofty social sphere to which she had been called. Seldom, nowadays, did she go in her full regalia uptown. Automobiles came no more to his flattered door. Worst of all, her fascinating mail had dwindled. Where formerly there would be as many as eight or ten envelopes per week, decorated with splendid and significant insignia and inclosing proud and stiff cardboard, now there was but one regular communication of the sort, the letter bearing the mystic double circle of the Spirit of Guidance Group and, as that was postmarked Brooklyn, Mr. Boggs had a small notion of its social import. Most of her days the aristocratic lodger now spent at solitaire, with Sempronius, the black cat, for critic. Mr. Boggs surmised sadly that the goddess of his top-floor Olympus was growing old.

Very likely the phenomenon would have gone unexplained to this day had not both the Rosser twins fallen into the fountain simultaneously, contrary to their usual custom, which is for one of them to take the careless plunge while the other dances frantically on terra firma and yells till help comes. Madam Tallafferr once termed them “Death's playmates,” because of this ineradicable passion for gambling on the brink of the pool which is just deep enough to cover their two-year-old heads. On this occasion Old Sally was the nearest aid. So she waddled fatly over and hauled them out easily enough. Then, quite inexplicably, she fell in herself and lay gently oscillating at the bottom of three feet of water. Still more inexplicably, she refused to come to properly when Mr. Boggs and I fished her out after not more than thirty seconds' immersion. Also she looked queerly flattened and misshapen and unnatural. So we ran her into the Little Red Doctor's office and awaited the verdict.

It was a long wait. When at length the Little Red Doctor emerged there was a wild kind of glint in his eye.

“D' you know what's the matter with that old black idiot?” he demanded.

“Martyr to her own hee-roism,” suggested Mr. Boggs, the romantic. “Is she drowned?”

The Little Red Doctor snorted: “She's starved. That's what she is!”

“She's as fat as butter,” I protested.

“Fat like a sliver!” retorted the physician scornfully. “Padded!”

“What on earth should she pad for?” I cried.

“To fool her mistress. She's been going without food so as to buy more for madam.”

At this information the eyes of the Destroying Angel bade fair to pop from their sockets and injure the Little Red Doctor toward whom they were violently protruding. “D' ye meantersay they're poor?” he gasped.

The Little Red Doctor outlined the history of the aristocratic pair, as he had extracted it from Old Sally. In the extraction he had grossly violated his professional ethics, as he shamelessly admitted, by giving her a half glass of port, which, on her pinched stomach operated as a tongue-loosener and betrayed her secret into his hands.

“I'm not going to have two aged females dying of want in Our Square just for the sake of a paper ethic or two,” he declared rebelliously.

According to what he had learned, the Duchess had left Virginia to save money and appearances, dragging along like a fetter a debt of honor contracted by a worthless scamp of a brother. Of course it was not in any sense a legal debt, but she, with her old-world ideas, had considered it to be a blot upon the family 'scutcheon, and had been paying interest, and bit by bit the principal, from her rigidly conserved little income. Presently an investment which had been indicated through the Spirit of Guidance Group's interpretation of one of madam's dreams reduced its dividends and madam cut off a few of her filial memberships. Another recommended by the dream magazine went wholly wrong. More memberships were reluctantly resigned. Old Sally, as head of the commissary, with full powers and responsibilities, was compelled to operate on a radically reduced apportionment. Two items took precedence of all else—the rent and the debt.

“You meantertellme,” chirped Mr. Boggs, “that Madam Tallafferr hasn't had enough to eat?”

“I do not,” said the Little Red Doctor emphatically. “She has. Old Sally hasn't. But her mistress doesn't know that.”

Mr. Boggs raised pious eyes to the ceiling. “Wotche going to do about it?” he inquired. He was, I take it, reminding Providence of its responsibility in the matter.

The Little Red Doctor wasn't for leaving it to Providence. “We've got to find a way to help.”

“Charity? To madam?” twittered Mr. Boggs. “I'd hate to try it on.”

The Little Red Doctor scratched his large red head in perplexity. Then he called Old Sally in.

“Now, Sally,” said he, “we're all friends of yours here.”

“Yessuh,” said Old Sally gratefully. “And friends of your mistress's.”

Old Sally bristled. “My young mist'ess ain' needin' no frien's 'roun' yeah. She hol's her haid high!”

“Well, admirers, then,” the Little Red Doctor tactfully amended. “The point is, we want to help. Now, haven't you got some things there you could sell without missing them? Some of that old furniture must be valuable.”

“Sell the Tallaffeh homestead fuhni-ture!” cried Old Sally, scandalized.

“Well, perhaps madam has more of that old lace than she needs.”

“The Pinckney lace!” said Old Sally in a tone of flat finality, which settled that point.

“Possibly, then, the diamonds,” I suggested diffidently.

At this Old Sally's lips, which had been pressed firmly inward, inverted themselves. She began to blubber. The blubbering became a sobbing. The sobs waxed to subdued howls. From the midst of the howls one coherent and astounding statement emerged:—

“I stole'em.”

“Stole the Pemberton diamonds!” cried Mr. Boggs in consternation. His structure of social splendor was fast disintegrating. “What did you do with em?”

“Hocked,” wept that sorry and shrunken old negress. “Gossome cheap trash in deir place to fool my young mist'ess. Her sight ain' good no mo'.”

“And the money went for food,” I suggested.

“Some. Rest I put on a dream figgah.”

“Policy,” explained the Little Red Doctor, who is wise in the ways of the world. “She dreamed a number and put her money on it in a policy shop. And it didn't come out. They never do.”

“Ef it had,” said Old Sally eagerly, “I'd'a' had money to pay dat eighteen hund'ed an' fo'ty-five dollahs an' fifty cents debt, an' plenty mo' besides.” Obviously she had been wearing that hair-shirt debt next to her soul's skin. “But I must'a' disremembered my dream figgah.”

“Very likely,” agreed the Little Red Doctor gravely. “Come now, Sally; think. Isn't there anything you could sell out of the house?”

The old face began to work again. “My young mist'ess she'll like to skin me if I tell,” she whimpered.

“I'll cross your eyes like Schepstein's, if you don't,” threatened the Little Red Doctor savagely.

A deep breath signified the termination of her struggle between two fears.

“Tazmun,” she enunciated in a mystical voice.

We looked at each other, puzzled. “What?” queried Mr. Boggs.

“Tazmun. You know, tazmun.”

“What on earth is tazmun?”

“Tazmun,” she repeated determinedly. “Like whut you keep aroun' you to fotch luck.” Seeing us still at a loss, she sought and evolved an illustration.

“Rabbit foot's a tazmun.”

“Talisman,” I translated in a burst of inspiration.

“Dass it, tazmun.”

“But you can't sell a talisman,” objected the Little Red Doctor.

“Dis tazmun you can,” eagerly asserted Old Sally. “Wuth a heap o' money. My young mist'ess keep it locked up in her jool box. Lawzee! How I has tried to get my han's on'at ol' tazmun lettah.'Cause we sho' need de money fo' it.”

“A letter?”

“Dass it. Aut'graph tazmun letter. Fum Gen'al Stonewall Jackson, wrote to ol' Massah Pemberton, befo' de war.”

Mr. Boggs turned to me. “Dominie, you know everything.” (This is one of the perquisites of professing the classics in Our Square; it has also its drawbacks in the shape of disappointed expectations.) “Would that kind of letter be worth real money?”

“It's a fo'tellin' lettah,” put in Old Sally eagerly. “It fo'tells de wah mo' dan ten yeahs befo' de wah.”

In that case, I thought, it might be valuable historically. Anyway it would do no harm to get an offer from an expert. But could “young mist'ess” be induced to let it out of her hands? Young mist'ess's Old Sally thought it doubtful. Young mist'ess, with her passion for the things of the Lost Cause, held that document in sacred veneration. Once a week she took it from its neatly addressed envelope to read it. Her spirit guide had repeatedly advised her of its preciousness, and had declared that it would eventually bring fortune and happiness to her, if she would await the sign. What sign? Old Sally did not know. But she was certain that a marvelous “tazmun” such as General Stonewall Jackson's foretelling letter would furnish a sign beyond all misconception.

“Sign? She shall have a sign,” muttered the Little Red Doctor, who is wholly without conscience in any matter where he can pamper his insatiable appetite for help-ing others. Then to Sally: “But don't you say a word to her of what you have told us.”

“Cotch me!” said that aged crone. “I don' want to get skint.”

How to come to negotiations with the secluded and exclusive Madam Rachel Pinckney Pemberton Tallafferr was something of a problem. Strategy was useless against that keen old woman. The direct way was decided upon and Mr. Boggs was appointed emissary. He respectfully petitioned that the lady grant a conference to the Little Red Doctor, myself, and himself upon a matter of business. Prefacing her gracious consent with the comment that she could not conceive what it was about, she set an hour for receiving us. When we climbed to the top floor above the Angel of Death sign, we found her a faded and splendid figure amid the faded splendor of her belongings. She was clad in her stiffest black, she sat in the biggest Tallafferr chair, her throat emerged from the delicate and precious Pinckney lace, and there glittered in her innocent ears a grotesque travesty upon the small but time-honored Pemberton diamonds. I knew on sight what she would say. She said it: “To what am I indebted, sirs, for this visit?”

The Little Red Doctor explained that we were interested, historically, in a document which she possessed. The Duchess's sharp glance passed over me to rest sardonically upon Mr. Boggs, seeming to inquire with what historical interest that insecticidal nemesis might be credited; then leaped upon and fixed the spokesman: “How, may I ask, did you learn of this document?”

“Through a dream,” replied that shameless one.

Her glance livened. “Strange,” she murmured. “You dreamed—what?”

“That there was preserved at the top of this house a prophetic letter of Stonewall Jackson's.”

The old lady's eyebrows twitched. He had touched the right chord of superstition. Her voice was quite animated as she asked: “And you actually expect this dream to be confirmed?”

“Pardon me; it is already confirmed. A few days after, I saw a newspaper clipping, stating that such a letter was said to be in existence, but that its whereabouts was unknown.”

I shuddered. Couldn't the reckless idiot foresee the next question? It came, straight and sharp:—

“Have you the clipping?”

“I have.”

I gasped with relief, wonder, and admiration.

He had. That wise young Ananias had quietly provided for it all by getting Inky Mike, who loftily terms himself a journalist (being a pressman's assistant in a socialist weekly office), to set up and strike off a brief and vague article which the Little Red Doctor himself had composed for the occasion. Madam Tallaffer read it with heightened color.

“This,” she said to Old Sally calmly, “is without doubt the Sign.”

From a beautifully inlaid box she reverently took an old buff envelope, stamped and postmarked, and put it in the Little Red Doctor's hands. “This, sirs,” said she, “is my talisman. It was given to me, as his most prized possession, by my father, to whom it was written.”

“What do you value this at, Madam Tallafferr?” asked the physician.

Her reply came without hesitation. “Eighteen hundred and forty-five dollars and fifty cents.”

The Little Red Doctor's jaw fell. “Eighteen—did I understand you to say eighteen hundred?”

“And forty-five dollars and fifty cents. That is the minimum. It is perhaps worth more.”

“Er—yes. Certainly. Very likely,” said the Little Red Doctor jerkily.

“I bid you good day, sirs,” said the Duchess. “You will, of course, exercise every care of General Jackson's letter.”

We bowed ourselves out. On the sidewalk we looked upon each other in dismay. “And Old Sally down to the last dollar,” said the Little Red Doctor, neglecting to mention that he had given her the dollar.

“Let's try the letter on the trade, anyway,” piped Boggs hopefully. “You can't tell but maybe it might be worth the money. Is there an autograph trade, dominie?”

In my capacity of omniscience, I chanced, happily for my reputation, to be informed upon this and to be able to make some definite suggestions. We went to Mr.

Barker's small and recherchÉ curio shop, with the talisman. Mr. Barker did not bark. He purred. The substance of his purring was that while the letter was authentic beyond question and would be of interest to some Southern historical society, it could claim no special value. As for the prophetic feature, upon which so much stress had been laid, a mere opinion that, “Be it sooner or be it later, the moot question of State rights will demand a final settlement,” could hardly be regarded as an inspired forecast of the Civil War. However, should we say twenty-five dollars?

As the business brains of our delegation, Mr. Boggs, intrusted with the bargaining, would not say twenty-five dollars. Mr. Boggs would not say anything remotely suggesting twenty-five dollars. Mr. Boggs would say good day, which he forthwith did in great disgust of spirit. From Mr. Barker we went to Mr. Pompany. Mr. Pompany neither barked nor purred. He mumbled. The upshot of his submaxillary communication was a dim “Twenty dollars, take it or leave it.” We left it, and Mr. Pompany, the latter with a Parthian arrow sticking in his soul (if he had one) in the form of Mr. Boggs's firm opinion, delivered in a baleful squeak, that he might be only an ignoramus, but had rather the appearance and bearing of a swindler.

“Thieves!” piped Mr. Boggs on the sidewalk. “Thieves and fatheads, the whole trade. What now?”

“Schepstein,” said the Little Red Doctor. “He's a thief too. But he knows.” Schepstein received us in his grubby, grimy, desolated front room, which did duty as an office, with a malevolent cross-fire from his distorted eyes. “Bit of business?” he repeated after Mr. Boggs. “What business? State your business.”

“For sale,” piped Mr. Boggs, handing him the letter which he had taken from the envelope.

Hardly a glance did Schepstein give it. “Thomas Jonathan Jackson? Who'she? And who's this Major Pemberton?”

Mr. Boggs explained, in indignant piccolo tones, who Thomas Jonathan Jackson was. Not about Major Pemberton, however. No authority had been given to our deputation to disclose the ownership of the letter; So far as we were aware at that time, it would have meant nothing to Schepstein anyway. We had no reason, then, to suppose that he even knew Madam Tallafferr.

“Humph!” grunted Schepstein. “Stonewall Jackson, eh? Might be worth something. Lessee the envelope.”

He looked it over carefully, front and back, folded the letter which he had not even read, and slipped it back in. “Leave it with me overnight,” he suggested negligently. “I'll think it over and make you a price in the morning.”

“Think as much as you like,” returned Mr. Boggs, retrieving the treasure. “We'll keep this. And we'll be back at eleven to-morrow.”

Observe, now, the advantages of living in a small self-centered community like Our Square, where everybody has an intimate (if not invariably friendly) interest in everybody else's affairs. Inky Mike had noted with curiosity our visit to Schepstein. As a press tender, the inky one naturally aspires to be a reporter, but his ideal reporter, being derived mainly from journalism as set forth in the movies, is a species of glorified compromise between Sherlock Holmes and Horace Greeley in a rich variety of disguises. He had no disguise handy, but he washed his face and followed Schepstein when that astute bargainer set forth immediately after our visit. Further, he listened outside the booth while the object of his sleuthing phoned a telegram. As he reported it in great excitement to our trio, it was addressed to a gentleman named Olds, in Cincinnati and read to this esoteric effect:—

“Alexandra local five forty-six perfect. What price? Answer quick.”

“Who's Olds?” asked the Little Red Doctor.

“Olds? Doncher know Olds?” cried Inky Mike. “The oil king? The multamillionaire?”

“What has this to do with us?” I asked. “It seems to be some oil quotation. What does Alexandra local' mean?”

“Search me!” offered the amateur sleuth. “But don'choo fool yourself! It's your business, awright. He snook out after you went, shakin' all over.”

Mr. Boggs, who from the first had been profoundly impressed by his Duchess's tradition-inspired estimate of the autograph, nodded a sagacious head. “Trust old Schep!” he fluted.

“When I've his money in hand; not before,” grunted the Little Red Doctor.

When we called at the dingy and lonely flat on the following morning, Schepstein's face was a mask of smiling craft.

“It's worth possibly—pos-sib-bly fifteen dollars as a spec,” he said.

“No,” cheeped Mr. Boggs.

“But the autograph market is looking up. I'll take a chanst and give you twenty-five. Cash,” he added impressively.

“No,” repeated Mr. Boggs.

“What's the matter with you?” demanded Schepstein with rising truculence. “D' you wan ta sell or don't cha? What's your price?”

“Eighteen hundred and forty-five dollars and fifty cents,” said Mr. Boggs in a clear, businesslike soprano.

Schepstein did not sneer, nor explode, nor curse, nor do any of the things which I confidently expected him to do. His convergent vision seemed to focus on the buff envelope in Mr. Boggs's lumpy hand. He looked thoughtful, and, it seemed to me, almost respectful. “As she stands?” he asks.

“As she stands,” assented Mr. Boggs. “Bought,” said Schepstein. And he wrote out a check to “Bearer.”

At this the Little Red Doctor lost his head and profoundly altered the situation. “By thunder!” he cried, “Madam Tal-lafferr knew what she was talking about all the time.”

Schepstein dropped his pen. “Who?” he asked in a rasping voice.

“Madam Tallafferr, across Our Square in Seventeen.”

“Was that her letter?”

“Yes. We are acting as her agents.”

“Ah, hell!” said Schepstein softly. Then an astounding thing happened. Two small, pinched tears welled out from the ill-matched points of flint which serve Schepstein for eyes. They were followed by two more. The little, gnarly, cross-grained Jew drooped over the desk and his shoulders shook. A voice of falsetto anguish roused him.

“Don't cry on the check! You'll smudge it.”

Schepstein lifted his head and gloomed at Boggs. “Nevamind that; it's all off,” he gulped. “I got something to tell you people.”

Between queer, shamed breath-catch-ings, he told us about his Metta's funeral. At the end he read us a telegram from Quentin Olds. When I was able to assimilate its full meaning, I found myself shaking hands with Schepstein, while Mr. Boggs danced a jig with the Little Red Doctor. Then. Schepstein tore up the check for $1845.50 and invited us around to the Elite Restaurant to luncheon, thereby affording a sensational titbit of news for Polyglot Elsa's relating for a fortnight after. “Mr. Schepstein, he paid the whole compte. Was kennst du about that!” Three days were required to finish the deal. Then through Old Sally the deputation trio sought and obtained another audience from the Duchess. Mr. Boggs did the talking in terms worthy of his environment. “We have successfully terminated the negotiations, Madame Tallafferr,” he began.

The Duchess bowed in silent dignity.

“And I have now the honor of turning over to you eighteen hundred and forty-five dollars and fifty cents, as—”

“Hally-loo-yah, tazmun!” burst out Old Sally. “Hally—hally—hally—” She caught her mistress's austere glance. “I knowed it was cornin' so all along,” she concluded, heroically compressing herself to a calm if belated assurance.

“—as the minimum price stipulated,” pursued Mr. Boggs.

“I thank you,” said the Duchess.

“Also,” concluded the agent, “a balance, after deducting all expenses, of two thousand one hundred and fifty-three dollars and twenty cents.”

The Duchess's face never so much as changed. “That is entirely satisfactory,” she observed. “I have to thank you all for your successful efforts in securing a suitable price. My only regret,” the quiet voice faltered a little, “is that circumstances should have forced me to part with an expression of esteem for my beloved father from one who was the greatest military hero of all history.”

“You're in wrong, lady,” caroled Mr. Boggs, his rhetoric suddenly melting in his excitement. “We sold the envelope alone for four thousand dollars pet. There's only three other of them 1846 Alexandria postmaster's stamps in the world today. So here's your Stonewall letter as good as new.”

“My Gawsh!” said old Sally, and fell down upon the floor and rolled and gave praise after the manner of her race, unrebuked this time of her mistress.

That aged and grand dame took back the letter with a hand which, for all that it had been rock-firm when it received MacLachan's revolver, now trembled a little. But her sole comment was: “And yet there are those so obstinate and shortsighted as to deny that the spirits guide us for our own good.”

Once more, finely embossed stationery came pouring in at No. 17, Our Square, proudly edifying the soul of Mr. Boggs. Once more Madam Tallafferr went forth on missions of social splendor, westward and uptown, sometimes in an automobile. Once more the restored Pemberton diamonds glistened in the fine, withered ears, Old Sally having confessed and been duly beaten and forgiven.

Old Sally herself, replete and pompous, trotted to and fro in Our Square, brimful of smiling hints of a great honor that was to come to us. Her young mist'ess, she let it be known, was graciously pleased to be recognizant of the part, useful though humble, which Our Square had played in her reestablished fortunes, and she was about to acknowledge it in a manner worthy of her family and her traditions. In Old Sally's own words, she was going to “mo' dan even it up wif you all.” Curiosity, speculation, and surmise had become almost morbid in Our Square, when one morning there burst upon us, in an effulgence of glory, a mail as splendid as any which had ever brightened Mr. Boggs's worshiping eyes on its passage upward to his top floor. To Mr. Boggs himself it came, to Schepstein, to the Little Red Doctor, to me, to Polyglot Elsa, and to many others, even down the scale as far as Inky Mike, this big white envelope, sealed with a square of black sealing wax and inclosing a most gratifyingly proud and stiff pasteboard card. That card still stands carefully dusted on many a mantel of Our Square, a guerdon and manifesto of social glory. At the top of it is blazoned the crest of the Tallafferrs, standing between the flag of the Confederacy and the coat of arms of Old Virginia. Below runs this legend—in real engraving if you please:—

Our Square had won social recognition.