on the rooftops all about; white faces showed at the windows; soon the center of the square had filled; the converging streets became black with closely packed people.  The windows and doors and balconies, the copings and railings, the slopes of the hills round about were all occupied.  In less than an hour twenty thousand people had gathered.  They took their positions quietly and waited patiently.  It was evident that they had assembled in the role of spectators only, and that action had been left to more competent and better organized men.  There was no shouting, no demonstration, and so little talking that it amounted only to a low murmur.  Already the doors of the jail had been closed.  The armed forces on the roof had been increased.

After a time the congested crowd down one of the side-streets was agitated by the approach of a body of armed men.  At the same instant a similar group began to appear at the end of another and converging street.  The columns came steadily forward, as the people gave way.  The men wore no uniforms, and the glittering steel of their bayonets furnished the only military touch.  The two columns reached the convergence of the street at the same time and as they entered the square before the jail a third and a fourth column debouched from other directions, while still others deployed into view on the hills behind.  They all took their places in rank around the square.

Among the well-known characters of the times was a certain Colonel Gift.  Mr. Hubert H. Bancroft, the chronicler of these events, describes him as “a tall, lank, empty-boweled, tobacco-spurting Southerner, with eyes like burning black balls, who could talk a company of listeners into an insane asylum quicker than any man in California, and whose blasphemy could not be equaled, either in quantity or quality, by the most profane of any age or nation.”  He remarked to a friend nearby, as he watched the spectacle below:  “When you see these damned psalm-singing Yankees turn out of their churches, shoulder their guns, and march away of a Sunday, you may know that hell is going to crack shortly.”

For some time the armed men stood rigid, four deep all around the square.  Behind them the masses of the people watched.  Then at a command the ranks fell apart and from the side-streets marched the sixty men chosen by Olney, dragging a field gun at the end of a rope.  This they wheeled into position in the square and pointed it at the door of the jail.  Quite deliberately, the cannon was loaded with powder and balls.  A man lit a slow match, blew it to a glow, and took his position at the breech.  Nothing then happened for a full ten minutes.  The six men stood rigid by the gun in the middle of the square.  The sunlight gleamed from the ranks of bayonets.  The vast multitude held its breath.  The wall of the jail remained blank and inscrutable.

Then a man on horseback was seen to make his way through the crowd.  This was Charles Doane, Grand Marshal of the Vigilantes.  He rode directly to the jail door, on which he rapped with the handle of his riding-whip.  After a moment the wicket in the door opened.  Without dismounting, the rider handed a note within, and then, backing his horse the length of the square, came to rest.