CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE FLIGHT.
About ten days after Ralph's return to Flat Creek things came to a crisis.
The master was rather relieved at first to have the crisis come.

He had been holding juvenile Flat Creek under his feet by sheer force of will.
And such an exercise of "psychic power" is very exhausting.

In racing on the Ohio the engineer sometimes sends the largest of the firemen to hold the safety valve down, and this he does by hanging himself to the lever by his hands.

Ralph felt that he had been holding the safety-valve down, and that he was so weary of the operation that an explosion would be a real relief.

He was a little tired of having everybody look on him as a thief.