The Blacksmith

Lottie Brown lived with her father and mother in a little settlement not far from St. Louis. In the village was located Dave, the blacksmith, who was desperately in love with Lottie and whose attentions were not unwelcome to the girl. One fateful day there arrives in the village a chap from the city named Ned Tolliver, who is on a hunting trip and is taken as a boarder into the Brown household. Lottie falls in love with the newcomer and in answer to Dave's frenzied remonstrance, she breaks with him entirely. Things run along the even tenor of their way till one day Ned receives a letter from a friend in the city, reproaching him for his desertion of his friends and urging him to return. By this time he has tired of his country girl and leaving a note of farewell for her he sneaks out under cover of the night. The shock overwhelms Lottie who, always delicate, never recovers from the blow. She fades away and in the delirium of her illness is constantly calling for her recalcitrant lover. Dave, whose devotion nothing can kill, determines to bring the city man to her side in the hope that she will be benefited. He goes to the city after him and forces him to return, but they arrive too late. Bidding Tolliver return whence he came and be thankful that he is permitted to do so with a whole skin, Dave sadly returns to the bedside of the woman he had loved, who cold in death, he could claim as his own at last, with no one to dispute his right.