An over-ripe cabbage may be a dangerous missile. This one exploded almost like a bomb against the warehouse, spattering Cherry Hopkins all over. She screamed and ran back toward Ralph Fairbanks. A harsh voice shouted: “Poor shot! Yer oughter smashed that Hopkins gal, Whitey.” Ralph saw that the group of fellows behind the flagman’s shack had scattered. One long-legged fellow was ahead and evidently in some fear of apprehension. “You wait right here, Miss Cherry!” the young dispatcher cried. “I’m going to try to get that fellow.” He dashed along the tracks and through an alley of which he knew. He hoped to head off the fellow called “Whitey,” who he was quite sure had thrown the cabbage. But when he came out upon North Main Street he could not see any sign of the hoodlum. He looked into several small stores and tenement house halls, but the fellow had made good his escape. When he returned by the way of Hammerby Street he saw Cherry Hopkins trying to wipe the decayed vegetable matter off her sweater and skirt. Her pretty hat was likewise stained. When Ralph came near enough he saw that the girl had been crying. No man or boy likes to see a girl weep. Ralph hesitated, not knowing what to say to Cherry Hopkins. He had never been more than casually acquainted with the supervisor’s daughter; but he did admire her. Ralph could not have failed to attract the young girl’s attention during the three months she had spent in Rockton. In the first place, almost everybody in the small but thriving city knew the young train dispatcher. In the first story about Ralph, “Ralph of the Roundhouse,” the young fellow’s beginnings on the Great Northern were fully related. His father had been one of the builders of the Great Northern, but through unfortunate speculations he had died poor and left Ralph and his mother to struggle along as best they could. In addition, Mr. Fairbanks’ partner, Gaspar Farrington, had been dishonest, and had Ralph and his widowed mother at his mercy. How Ralph checkmated Farrington as well as the exciting incidents of his career in the roundhouse is all narrated in that first volume of the series. In ensuing volumes the young fellow’s career as towerman, fireman, engineer, and in the different grades of dispatcher, is told in full. The sixth volume, “Ralph on the Army Train,” is the story of the youth’s work in that great part which the railroaders took in the war. By Ralph’s individual effort, a heavily loaded train of our boys bound for the embarking port was taken through to safety in spite of a plot to wreck the train. He was now, some months later, back on his old job as chief dispatcher of this division of the Great Northern. He might have had a good position on the main line; but, in taking it, he would have had to sacrifice some independence and, more than all, must have given up the little home he and his mother owned in Rockton and removed the widow from surroundings that she loved.