When she did so, he smiled faintly and with an effort feebly responded: "Thank Mary for me. I suppose they wanted to read about the flood." Mr. Bones had not seen fit to report to Mary that a baker's dozen of old subscribers had ordered their paper stopped; nor that one angry man with a big club in his hand had inquired for the editor; nor that Deacon Abrams, and the Town Constable, and three other men, and a lawyer had called to see the editor about the robbery at Mrs. McNamara's; nor that the same worthy woman, with her arms akimbo and her bonnet falling back, had fiercely demanded of him: "Fwhat for did yez print all that about me howlin'? Wudn't ony woman spake, was she bein' robbed and murdhered?" Bones had pacified Mrs. McNamara only by sitting still and hearing her out, and he would not for anything have mentioned it to Miss Ogden. She therefore had only good news to tell at the house, and Mrs. Murdoch's replies related chiefly to the Union Church Sociable at Judge Edwards's. "Mr. Murdoch is quiet," she said, "and he may sleep all the time we're gone." "I'll be on hand to look out for him," said Jack, "I'm not going anywhere." That reassured them as to leaving home, and Mrs. Murdoch and Mary departed without anxiety; but they had hardly entered the Edwards's house before they found that many other people were very much less placid. 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." "That's the editorial from the Chicago daily," thought Mary; "the last part was from that Boston paper! Oh, dear me! What have I done?"