It does not seem to have occurred to any of those who thus gallantly hastened to the relief of their sister city that in so doing they were exposing their own homes, defenceless, to the danger of attack from domestic organizations in sympathy with the Chicago rioters and acting under the same direction. But this was the very event for which the master-spirit of the combined revolutionists had waited; the one which he had foreseen; the one upon which he had based his plans. While the trains bearing the last of the reinforcements from New York and Boston to the “Protectors” before Chicago were flying across the Illinois prairies, he issued his final order, and struck his long-delayed but crushing blow. Its effects were instantly and simultaneously felt in every quarter of the land. As the little army of citizens, aided by a few national troops which the Government had been able to gather from forts along the Atlantic coast, were busily preparing for a movement upon the revolutionists, telegrams began to pour in upon them from New York, Boston, and the other cities which they had left, announcing the rising of mobs in each one and the impossibility of resisting them in the absence of so many of the natural militia at Chicago. The truth dawned, with the suddenness of lightning and with equal distinctness, upon the entire country. It was seen that the revolutionists had waited till a large proportion of those citizens bound together for the defence of law and the maintenance of order had been massed in another direction. They had then, in accordance with a thoroughly understood plan, risen in every city and begun the work of destruction for which their souls had long thirsted. From East and West and South flashed over the shuddering wires dire tidings of riot, rapine, pillage, murder, anarchy. Destructive and insatiate mobs ruled in what had been the seats of order and prosperous trade and happy homes. Every city in the Union was turned into a veritable gateway of Gehenna. The scenes of barbarous vandalism which had made the name of Chicago a reproach in the ears of the world were re-enacted in scores of her sister towns. Leaving Chicago to its fate, the men who had been summoned to its aid hurried frenziedly homeward in the hope of saving their families or their possessions from utter annihilation. The nation stood aghast, panic-stricken, and bereft of its usual energies before this great horror of incredible wickedness which had burst with volcanic suddenness and havoc upon the land. From Boston to Galveston, from Savannah to Minneapolis, the heavens were thick with the smoke of burning cities bearing upwards in its coils the reek of innocent blood. VIII. THE REIGN OF ANARCHY.