“I am stabbed!  Take them, Vigilantes!” he said.

He dropped to the sidewalk.  Terry and his friends ran towards the armory.  Of the Vigilante posse only Bovee and Barry remained, but these two pursued the fleeing Law and Order men to the very doors of the armory itself.  When the portals were slammed in their faces they took up their stand outside; and alone these two men held imprisoned several hundred men!  During the next few minutes several men attempted entrance to the armory, among them our old friend Volney Howard.  All were turned back and were given the impression that the armory was already in charge, of the Vigilantes.  After a little, however, doubtless to the great relief of the “outside garrison” of the armory, the great Vigilante bell began to boom out its signals:  one, two, three—­rest; one, two, three—­rest; and so on.

Instantly the streets were alive with men.  Merchants left their customers, clerks their books, mechanics their tools.  Draymen stripped their horses of harness, abandoned their wagons, and rode away to join their cavalry.  Within an incredibly brief space of time everybody was off for the armory, the military companies marching like veterans, the artillery rumbling over the pavement.  The cavalry, jogging along at a slow trot, covered the rear.  A huge and roaring mob accompanied them, followed them, raced up the side-streets to arrive at the armory at the same time as the first files of the military force.  They found the square before the building entirely deserted except for the dauntless Barry and Bovee, who still marched up and down singlehanded, holding the garrison within.  They were able to report that no one had either entered or left the armory.

Inside the building the spirit had become one of stubborn sullenness.  Terry was very sorry—­as, indeed, he well might be—­a Judge of the Supreme Court, who had no business being in San Francisco at all.  Sworn to uphold the law, and ostensibly on the side of the Law and Order party, he had stepped out from his jurisdiction to commit as lawless and as idiotic a deed of passion and prejudice as could well have been imagined.  Whatever chances the Law and Order party might have had heretofore were thereby dissipated.  Their troops were scattered in small units; their rank and file had disappeared no one knew where; their enemies were fully organized and had been mustered by the alarm bell to their usual alertness and capability; and Terry’s was the hand that had struck the bell!

He was reported as much chagrined.

“This is very unfortunate, very unfortunate,” he said; “but you shall not imperil your lives for me.  It is I they want.  I will surrender to them.”

Instead of the prompt expostulations which he probably expected, a dead silence greeted these words.

“There is nothing else to do,” agreed Ashe at last.