The Outcasts of Poker Flat Lesson Plan

The narrator says that the townsfolk of Poker Flat were "experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that provoked it." What does this mean and what is this comment's significance?

What the narrator is saying here is that the lawlessness, or fervor/excitability, that caused the crime wave in the first place is the same kind of ungovernable excitability with which the virtuous citizens are now conducting their expatriation of citizens. The significance of this quote is that it suggests that the postures, desires, and animating forces that govern the lawless are the same that govern the law-abiding, suggesting further...