While the excitement was heightened by these rumors and proceedings, an incident occurred which augmented it to frenzied quality. The armory of the Law and Order forces was in the capacious brick building, northeast corner of Dupont and Jackson streets. On Jackson street, near by, a number of its members and sympathizers were standing in groups. Sterling Hopkins, the volunteer hangman of Casey, of the Vigilance police, came up and attempted the arrest of Reub. Maloney, a notorious politician, whose impudence of speech and reckless ways in partisan devices had made him an unenviable reputation. His bravery was in his mouth; his mouth beyond his own control. Judge David S. Terry, then of the State Supreme Court, interposed to prevent the lawless arrest, and in the struggle he drew a knife and dangerously wounded Hopkins. In a few minutes word had reached the Committee headquarters, and the alarm was sounded with unexampled vigor. The Committee forces, marshalled and led by the Commander-in-chief, Charles Doane, Major General, marched in quick time to the scene. Judge Terry had gone to the armory, Maloney and others with him. The Law and Order troops were less than three hundred strong. The Vigilance force numbered several thousand. A surrender was demanded. It would have been folly to resist, and with Terry and Maloney as prisoners, and the Law and Order troops as prisoners of war, so to say, the Vigilance forces marched back to their fortified quarters. The arrest of Judge Terry wrought the excitement to its climax. What would the Committee do with him? was the question asked by every one. His residence was temporarily in Sacramento, but Stockton was his home place. Governor Johnson was devoted to him; David S. Douglass, Secretary of State, was a bosom friend. Hundreds in the capital city were prepared to go to any length to rescue him. His thousands of friends in San Joaquin, everywhere in the San Joaquin Valley, were aroused to the extremity of desperation. All over the State the feeling for Judge Terry was very strong. Harm to him would have precipitated a domestic row, which would have caused immense sacrifice of life, and the destruction of San Francisco. It would have extended into the interior, and raged there in bloodshed and devastation. The peaceful way out of the difficulty was thought the better course, if it could be accomplished. The occasion was extraordinary, and never contemplated--the exigency beyond immediate solution. As James Dows, one of the coolest in judgment and wisest in counsel of the Executive Committee, pertinently described the situation in the pithy remark, "We started in to hunt cayotes, but we've got a grizzly bear on our hands, and we don't know what to do with him." The Executive Committee were not themselves masters of the situation. Behind them, subject to them and ready to obey their commands on ordinary occasions, were the 5,000 members of the Committee who carried arms, and