[CHAPTER II--WAKING UP]
Ralph recognized that strident voice at once. It belonged to Gasper Farrington, one of the wealthiest men of Stanley Junction, and one of the meanest.
Whenever Ralph had met the man, and he met him often, one fact had been vividly impressed upon his mind. Gasper Farrington had a natural antipathy for all boys in general, and for Ralph Fairbanks in particular.
The Criterion Baseball Club was a feature with juvenile Stanley Junction, yet they had many a privilege abrogated through the influence of Farrington. He had made complaints on the most trivial pretexts, winning universal disrespect and hatred from the younger population.
More than once he had put himself out to annoy Ralph. In one instance the latter had stood for the rights of the club in a lawyer-like manner. He had beaten Farrington and the town board combined on technical legal grounds as to the occupancy of a central ball field, and Ralph's feelings towards the crabbed old capitalist had then settled down to dislike, mingled with a certain silent independence that nettled Farrington considerably.
He had publicly dubbed Ralph "the ringleader of those baseball hoodlums," a stricture passed up by the club with indifference.
Ralph never set his eyes on Farrington but he was reminded of his father. John Fairbanks had come to Stanley Junction before the Great Northern was even thought of. He had thought of it first. A practical railroad man, he had gone through all the grades of promotion of an Eastern railway system, and had become a division superintendent.
He had some money when he came to Stanley Junction. He foresaw that the town would one day become a tactical center in railroad construction, submitted a plan to some capitalists, and was given supervisory work along the line.
His minor capital investment in the enterprise was obscured by mightier interests later on, but before he died it was generally supposed that he held quite an amount of the bonds of the railroad, mutually with Gasper Farrington.
It was a surprise to his widow, and to friends generally of the Fairbanks family, when, after Mr. Fairbanks' death, a few hundred dollars in the bank and the homestead, with a twelve-hundred dollar mortgage on it in favor of Gasper Farrington, were found to comprise the total estate.