Even if the military under General Brown and the police had not shown the mob that they were its masters, the arrival of so many regiments, occupying all the infected districts, was overwhelming evidence that the day of lawless triumph was over, and that of retribution had come. Some acts of individual hostility were witnessed, but nothing more. Archbishop Hughes had his meeting, and some five thousand assembled to hear him. They were on the whole a peaceable-looking crowd, and it was evidently composed chiefly, if not wholly, of those who had taken no part in the riot. None of the bloody heads and gashed faces, of which there were so many at that moment in the city, appeared. The address was well enough, but it came too late to be of any service. It might have saved many lives and much destruction, had it been delivered two days before, but now it was like the bombardment of a fortress after it had surrendered--a mere waste of ammunition. The fight was over, and to use his own not very refined illustration, he "spak' too late." The reports that came in to Acton from all the precincts convinced him of this, and he began to think of rest. The strain was off, and overtasked nature made her demand, and he was compelled to yield to it. The tremendous work that had been laid upon him had been right nobly accomplished. Had he been a weak and vacillating man, the rioters would have acquired a headway that could not have been stopped, without a more terrible sacrifice of life and property--perhaps even of half the city. Comprehending intuitively the gravity of the situation, and the danger of procrastination or temporizing, he sprang at once for the enemy's throat, and never ceased his hold until he had strangled him to death. If he had waited to consult authorities about the legality of his action, or listened to the voice of pity, or yielded to the clamors of leading politicians or threats of enemies, both he and the city, in all human probability, would have been swept away in the hurricane of popular fury.