By his absence, however, this body politic seemed dismembered. The magnetism exercised by his single personality was extraordinary. So long as he was known to be at their head, the rioters followed their appointed leaders, his lieutenants, with fearless confidence, moving and acting in concert, not like an undisciplined mob, but like drilled troops, trained and controlled by a master of men. Now, in a single day, the whole movement seemed, in his absence, to have gone to pieces. Another reason for the nervousness of the rioters was the mysterious action, or inaction, of the military and the police. No attempt either to prevent the people from assembling, or to disperse them when assembled, had been made; and no blue or red-coated myrmidons of the civil or of the military forces had attempted to bar the thoroughfares, or to offer opposition of any sort to the revolutionaries. With the Dumpling present, as their leader and head, the absence of the police and of the military would have been counted by the mob as a signal proof of the completeness of their victory. With him away, it seemed ominous of ambush, pregnant with evil; and when the Dumpling's second in command announced that he intended, in their leader's absence, to carry out the plan of campaign as arranged by their leader himself, and gave the order for the riflemen to form up, and for the rank and file to fall in behind, the order, though obeyed, was obeyed spiritlessly and unwillingly. Then came the news that troops, mounted and on foot, were approaching by way of Queen Victoria Street and Cheapside; and as the trees of a great forest sway and waver before the coming of a storm, so over the rebel army there passed a sudden tremor, as if the members of that army were undecided whether to fight or to fly.