Two days later. A fierce July sun is pouring down a flood of humid, moisture-laden heat upon a densely-packed, sweltering mass of turbulent men, many of them flushed with drink, all of them flushed with triumph, for the ill-armed, ill-disciplined militia of the seventies--a pygmy force as compared with the expert "Guardsmen" of to-day--has been scattered to the winds: the sturdy police have been swept from the streets and driven to the shelter of the stations. Mob law rules supreme. Dense clouds of smoke are rising from sacked and ruined warehouses and from long trains of burning cars. Here and there little groups of striking employes have gathered, holding aloof from the reckless and infuriated mob, appalled at the sight of riot and devastation resulting from their ill-advised action. Many of their number, conscious of their responsibility for the scenes of bloodshed and pillage and wanton destruction of property, public and private, would now gladly undo their work and array themselves among the few defenders of the great corporations they have served for years and deserted at the call of leaders whom they never saw and in a cause they never understood, but there can be "no footsteps backward" now. The tide of riot has engulfed the great city of the West, and the majesty of the law is but the laughing-stock of the lowest of the masses. Huddled in their precinct stations the police are bandaging their bruised and broken heads. Rallied at their armories, the more determined of the militia are preparing to defend them and their colors against the anticipated attack of fifty times their force in "toughs,"--Chicago's vast accumulation of outlawed, vagabond, or criminal men. The city fathers are well-nigh hopeless. Merchants and business-men gather on 'Change with blanched faces and the oft-repeated query, "What next? What next?" Every moment brings tidings of fresh dismay. New fires, and a crippled and helpless department, for the rioters slash their hose and laugh their efforts to scorn. A gleam of hope shone in at ten o'clock, and the Board-room rang with cheers at the president's announcement that the regulars were coming,--a whole regiment of infantry from Omaha was already more than half-way. But the gleam died out at noon when, with white lips, an official read the telegram saying the strikers had "side-tracked" the special trains bearing the soldiers and they could not advance another mile.