This nervous, sinister mood was somehow abroad in the whole city that night. Mr. Negley D. Cochran had written another editorial, published that evening in heavy type, in the _News-Bee_, calling on the citizens to come out and protect their rights in the streets of their city, so that there were apprehensions of all sorts of danger and disaster. The council proceeded with its business; the voice of the reading clerk droned on in the resolutions and ordinances that represented the normal municipal activities of that hour, and then, suddenly, a sound of a new and unaccustomed sort arose from St. Clair Street, the sound of the tramp of marching men. Those at the windows, looking out, saw a strange spectacle--not without its menace; the newspaper reporters, some of them, embellished their reports with old phrases about faces blanching. Perhaps they did; they might well have done so, for the men came down St. Clair Street not as a mob; they were silent, marching in column, by sets of fours, with an orderly precision and a discipline almost military. And at their head there was a man whose square, broad shoulders and firm stride were the last expression of determination. He wore a slouch hat, under which his gray hair showed; his closely trimmed beard was grizzled; he looked, as many noted, not unlike the conventional portraits of General Grant. The man was Mr. Johnson Thurston, and he was as grim as General Grant, as brave, as determined, and as cool. He was widely known in Toledo as a lawyer, however, not as a politician; he had never been in politics, indeed, but he was in politics that night, surely, and destined to remain in politics for years to come. He brought his column to a halt under the windows of the council chamber. There was no room in that small chamber for such a delegation, or seemingly for any delegation of the people, however small. Johnson Thurston’s son marched beside him as an aide, bearing a soap box--the modern tribune of our democracy--and he placed it on the pavement for his father. A street car, just then halting, clanged its gong for the throng to make way, and at this perfect symbol of the foe they were opposing, Johnson Thurston shook his fist, and shouted: “Stand there! The people are attending to their business to-night!” The street car stood, and Johnson Thurston mounted his soap box, produced a paper and read from it in a loud voice that section of the Constitution in which the people retain to themselves the right peaceably to assemble and petition for a redress of grievances. And this done, he turned to his followers, gave them a signal, and there went up from their throats in perfect unison a mighty cry: “Let the franchise alone!”