Chest of Fortune

Hard pressed by the Federal troops, Morgan and his men flee across the bridge. Just before the pursuers come in sight one of Morgan's telegraphers taps the telegraph wires suspended underneath the bridge and learns that a quantity of supplies is being sent to Captain Wellington, of the Union forces. The Confederate leader places powder along the length of the bridge. The Federals come into view. Just as they are about to cross, the structure is blown skyward. Baffled, the Union soldiers are compelled to withdraw. Wellington receives the supplies and orders them stored in the cellar of his home. He and his wife are in the drawing room admiring a daguerreotype showing them seated with their four-year-old son, Jack, when a servant announces the approach of the raiders. The Captain hastily gathers together his silverware, which he places in a chest. Obeying an impulse, he throws the daguerreotype into the chest. Turning to two faithful old negro servants, he orders them to conduct Mrs. Wellington, Jack and the chest to safety. Shortly afterward the Captain is slain. A bullet strikes his wife and she shares his fate. Lugging the chest, the two servants hurry down to the river, with Jack tagging behind. The three tumble into a rowboat and head for midstream. Their flight is discovered by the raiders. A bullet kills the old mammy. To lighten the craft, the other servant throws the chest overboard. The next moment he is struck by a bullet and topples into the water. The rowboat drifts downstream, finally grounding near the landing of Stokes, a fisherman. Ward, a banker, is talking to Stokes at the time. They discover the boat and in it Jack, weeping bitterly over the body of his old mammy, Kate, the three-year-old daughter of the banker, places her little arms about the sobbing boy. Years pass. Jack, grown to manhood, becomes a civil engineer and is in charge of the dredging operations on the very river down which he drifted to safety. Although adopted by Stokes and his wife, Jack and Kate have practically grown up together. Their childhood affection has turned into love. Harry Memling, in Ward's employ, is also in love with Kate, but the girl turns a deaf ear to his avowals. Later, Jack asks Ward for his daughter's hand, but the banker gravely tells him that the marriage cannot take place because he fears that the mulatto woman found dead in the rowboat may have been Jack's mother. The following day the dredge brings up an old chest from the river bottom. An exam