o, it had identified itself
entirely with the natives of the land of its adoption. This fact alone
was sufficient to involve these immigrants in the same lot of
persecution which their newly arrived countrymen had organized and were
carrying out against the Trinidadians proper. It happened that, on the
occasion to which we wish particularly [88] to refer, the woman in
question was at home, engaged in her usual occupation of ironing for
her honest livelihood. Suddenly she heard a heavy blow in the street
before her door, and almost simultaneously a loud scream, which, on
looking hastily out, she perceived to be the cry of a boy of some ten
or twelve years of age, who had been violently struck with the fist by
another youth of larger size and evidently his senior in age. The
smaller fellow had laid fast hold of his antagonist by the collar, and
would not let go, despite the blows which, to extricate himself and in
retaliation of the puny buffets of his youthful detainer, he "showered
thick as wintry rain."

The woman, seeing the posture of affairs, shouted to the combatants to
desist, but to no purpose, rage and absorption in their wrathful
occupation having deafened both to all external sounds. Seized with
pity for the younger lad, who was getting so mercilessly the worst of
it, the woman, hastily throwing a shawl over her shoulders, sprang into
the street and rushed between the juvenile belligerents. Dexterously
extricating the hand of the little fellow from the collar of his
antagonist, she hurried the former [89] into her gateway, shouting out
to him at the same time to fasten the door on the inside. This the
little fellow did, and no doubt gladly, as this surcease from actual
conflict, short though it was, must have afforded space for the natural
instinct of self-preservation to reassert itself. Hereupon the elder
of the two lads, like a tiger robbed of his prey, sprang furiously to
the gate, and began to use frantic efforts to force an entrance.
Perceiving this, the woman (who meanwhile had not been idle with
earnest dissuasions and remonstrances, which had all proved futile)
pulled the irate youngster back, and interposed her body between him
and the gate, warding him off with her hands every time that he rushed
forward to renew the assault. At length a Barbadian policeman hove in
sight, and was hastily beckoned to by the poor ironer, who, by this
time, had nearly come to the end of her strength. The unifo