The Blacksmith's Story
Directed by Travers ValeThe story from which this picture is taken is in verse. The old blacksmith has been induced to tell his history by a chance remark of a portrait painter who has just sold him what appears in the picture to be an enlargement of his wife's photograph. The story thus drawn from the blacksmith is to the effect that while a young man he married the supposed widow of a soldier, believed to have been killed in battle. With his wife he went to Kansas and established himself in a new home, living very happily. One day a stranger happened along and stopped to have his horse shod. Again a chance remark brought forth the story of the traveler, revealing to the blacksmith that he was the husband who was supposed to have been killed in battle years ago. It is a stunning blow to the blacksmith, but he saw that there is only one way out of the dilemma; so, taking the man into the house he presented him to the wife. There is an immediate recognition and an agonizing parting as the woman proclaims that the man was her husband and she must go with him. The heart-broken blacksmith permits her to depart, taking with her the child, for he realizes, also, that the little one belongs with its mother. So it is that he is alone in his blacksmith shop with the picture of the woman he believed to be his wife.
