- The story centers on Harry Willard, a plodding farmer. A city "Gentleman" promises Harry's frivolous wife a life of ease and luxury and it is the old, old story. She takes her tiny daughter, Agnes, with her, and leaves a note announcing the fact for Harry. The young farmer, who loves his wife and child with an all-consuming love, well nigh loses his reason as he reads the announcement of his betrayal. Although without the bare means of subsistence, he searches for days for his loved ones. And eventually the strain, mental and physical, tells on him; he comes out of it all a maniac. His wrath takes the form of an aversion to all mankind. He wants to forget the world that has treated him so ill. He decides to become a hermit and betakes himself to a desolate cave, where he spends the years execrating humanity. A quarter century goes by. Rarely in that time does he venture on beaten paths for fear that he may meet a hated human, but one day he forgets his resolve long enough to cross a carriage drive. He hears the clatter of hoofs and sights a horse tearing towards him with a swaying carriage and screaming occupants, a runaway! As the carriage flashes past him, a woman in it flings a bundle to him; he catches it and finds it a pink and white bit of humanity. Dazed, he runs into the wilderness with the baby and makes for his cave. Arrived at the cave the maniac resolves to even his score with society by taking the babe's life. But his eyes light on the baby's locket and his hand is stayed. For the locket bears a picture of the child of the wife who betrayed him! The parents of the baby have miraculously escaped death in the crash of their carriage and trace the strange creature who rescued the child to his lair. They arrive as he ponders on the picture in the locket and tires to recall the original of it. The babe is the child of the original and its mother the hermit's daughter. Agnes, the one-time tot whom the deserting wife took with her. A wife and mother, she is a quite mature woman now but her features are unchanged. The face appears familiar to the hermit and he tries to place it. Eventually he succeeds. The shock of recognition dazes him, and changes him. The light of sanity returns to his eyes. His reason is restored. He takes to his breast the daughter whom he had lost and found again. She takes him from his forest home and back to the civilization that had tricked him. But the kindly care and love that his daughter bestows on him get in a measure as a recompense for the wrong done him in the long ago, and with the passing years the bitterness passes from his being. The picture touches the heart strings; it will please to a certainty.—Moving Picture World synopsis
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