John Burden

Rita, a telegraph operator, informed that a freight train which is due to pass her station filled with high explosives is about to be overtaken by a passenger train on the same track with a madman at the controls, leaps onto a handcar, which she crashes into the passenger train and thus stops it; she jumps onto the cowcatcher, and into the cab of the engine, where, after a hard struggle with the fiend, she manages to overcome him and sidetrack the passenger train thus preventing disaster.

The valet of Lord Harold Varden, on a secret mission to our Government, has been murdered. Dick Holloway, a reporter, detailed to the story, calls on Lord Varden just as the latter feels the effects of poison administered to him. He takes the place of the nobleman when his American cousins come for him, and not only saves his lordship's papers, but captures the spies detailed to get them.