While Wickersham was engaged in this second assault, with windows smashing to right of them and to left of them, with glass falling all around them, and the staves of old ash-barrels playing a devil's tattoo about them, the devoted band of editors, reporters, and copy-readers worked nobly on. They had confidence in their leader that their hour would come. Their first duty was to get out the paper. After that they looked for the deluge. When Wickersham had expended his last stave and fiercest epithet on the shattered windows he retired in bad order to his apartments at the St. James Hotel. Now began Field's revenge, planned with due deliberation and executed with malicious thoroughness. He first sent for "'Possum Jim," an aged and very serious colored man, who worshipped "Mistah Fiel'" because of the sympathy Eugene never withheld from the dark-skinned children of the race. "'Possum Jim" spent most of his existence on the same street corner, waiting for a job, which invariably had to come to him. His outfit consisted of an express wagon strung together with telegraph wire, and a nondescript four-footed creature that once bore the similitude of a horse. Whenever Field had an odd job to be done about his household he would go out of his way to let "old 'Possum Jim" earn the quarter--partly to do an act of kindness to "Jim," but chiefly to tease Mrs. Field by the appearance of the broken-down equipage lingering in front of their dwelling. Just before the Tribune went to press, a sergeant of police called on Field in response to a summons by telephone. After a whispered conference he left, with a broad smile struggling under his curling mustache. In company with a number of his staff Field next made the round of the all-night haunts and gathered to his aid as fine a collection of bohemian "thoroughbreds" as ever made the revels of Mardi Gras look like a Sunday-school convention. He installed them at the resort of a Kentucky gentleman named Jones, opposite the St. James. As one who was there reports, "The amber milk of the Blue-grass cow flowed in plenty." Bidding his associates await his return, Field, armed with a single bottle, crossed the street to the hotel in search of the enemy. For half, an hour they waited, in growing fear that Wickersham had retired for the night, with orders the night clerk dared not disobey, that he was not to be disturbed, even if the hotel was on fire. Just as expectation had grown heavy-eyed, Field appeared crossing the street with Wickersham on his arm, very happy, more of a good fellow than ever and more than ever ready for red-eyed anarchy of any sort.