The first person to come forward, after Mrs. Edwards had welcomed them, was Miss Glidden.
"Oh, Mary Ogden!" she exclaimed, very sweetly and benevolently. "My dear! Why did you say so much about me in the Eagle?"
"That was Mr. Murdoch's work," said Mary. "I had nothing to do with it."
"And that robbery and escape was really shocking."
"Exactly!" They heard a sharp, decided voice near them, and it came from a thin little man in a white cravat. "You are right, Elder Holloway! When a leading journal like the Eagle finds it needful to denounce so sternly the state of the public streets in Mertonville, it is time for the people to act. We ministers must hold a council right away."
Mary remembered a political editorial she had taken from a New York paper, and had cut down to fit the Eagle; but its effect was something unexpected.
A deeper voice on her left spoke next.
"There was serious talk among the hotel-men and innkeepers of mobbing the Eagle office to-day!"
"That," thought Mary, "must be the high-license editorial from that Philadelphia weekly."
"We must act, Judge Edwards!" exclaimed another voice. "Nobody knows Murdoch's politics, but his denunciation of the prevailing corruption is terrible. There's a storm rising. The Republican Committee has called a special meeting to consider the matter, and we Democrats must do the same. The Eagle is right about it, too; but it was a daring step for him to take."