The story
The young mechanic was dissipated and easily influenced by evil companions. He frequently came home intoxicated, and for months his wife patiently suffered ill treatment. Her father finally convinced her that she owed it to her child to bring her up under proper surroundings, so she left her husband, leaving a note in which she said that she and her little daughter had left him forever. The husband, who was an expert workman in the employ of a large safe factory, neglected his work and finally was discharged. His habits made it hard for him to get secure employment. Evil associates contaminated him, and he at last joined a band of yeggmen, where his ability as safe expert gained him leadership. The wife obtained a divorce from her husband and married a wealthy man. They had one child, a little girl of three, and while she came first in his affections, the husband cared nearly as much for his little stepchild.
The children were playing ‘hide and seek’ in their home one afternoon and the elder child ran into a vault, which was built into the library wall, to hide. The steel door of the vault was accidentally locked, and the child imprisoned. The stepfather had changed the safe combination that very morning and had mislaid the paper containing the numbers. He tried vainly to open the vault, and then remembered that several celebrated safe experts were among the convicts in a nearby prison. He telephoned to the warden and a convict was sent, under guard, to rescue the child from her predicament. The convict was the woman’s former husband. He recognized her and refused to aid them until he learned that the child that was in such dire peril was his own little daughter, whom he had not seen since she was a baby. Silently he bent over the combination, his quick ear on the alert to catch the fall of the tumblers as the combination numbers were passed, opened the safe and drew out the half-suffocated child to safety. Later he was paroled and left for the West to begin life anew under another name. The wakened love for his child had regenerated him.
Summary from The Moving Picture World · 28 June 1913
