Page:Ralph on the Railroad.djvu/465

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CHAPTER XX


THE CRAZY ORDERS


All Stanley Junction was agog with the story of the "crazy" train orders the day after the storm.

It was one of the most remarkable occurrences of risk and danger ever known in the history of the Great Northern.

Expert railroad men looked grave, as the facts came out. Citizens generally shuddered, as they realized how nearly the caprice of a mad leverman had come to causing wide-spread death and disaster.

Ralph Fairbanks himself was thrilled and amazed, as he learned from Jack Knight's lips the the facts of the case.

From ten o'clock the evening the storm until nearly two o'clock the ensuing morning, a madman had controlled the Great Northern train system at Stanley Junction, out and in.

For over three hours, therefore, Ralph, at the depot switch tower, had been the plaything of a crazed, delirious human being, who, by force and

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