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Learn more- The picture opens showing the sitting room in Widow Gray's house, the resilience of Nora Fairford, village school teacher. She and the widow's daughter, Annie, are friends. On her way to school, the teacher is met by John Bradbury, the young minister. They walk together as far as the post office and there are met by Lizzie Webber and Nellie Bowen, spinsters, who engage the minister's attention with gossip of the coming church social and he is forced to leave Nora. They walk to the church where the party is augmented by the minister's sister, Dot, and the old deacon, Lemuel Tidd. The next scene takes place in the village bank, of which Stephen Larabee, is cashier. Annie Grey loves Ned, an officer of the bank and nephew of the president, Squire Olcott. Finding that Annie doesn't love him, Larabee, on the night of the church social, goes to the bank, opens the inside door of the safe with a duplicate of the key he had given Ned, and abstracts several packages of money, hiding them in the cushion of his pew at church. This is done to direct the blame toward Ned. Martin Tripp, an overgrown schoolboy, seeing the church door ajar, thinks that a ghost has been there and places a bear trap in the belfry with which to catch the ghost. The next morning with malevolent intent, Larabee asks Ned for the safe key and upon opening the safe he feigns great surprise in finding the money gone. In self-protection he brings the Justice of the Peace. A few days later the constable gets a telegram from Boston stating that Ned is innocent, but that Squire Olcott has been speculating. Thereupon Ned, in a spirit of immolation, proclaims that he is the guilty one. The Boston detective, feeling sure that Ned is innocent, helps him to escape jail and flee to another part of the country in order that the trial may be delayed, thus giving him time to run down the real thief. The fugitive goes to the church to sleep and there encounters Larabee taking the hidden money. The deacon, who is up in the belfry doing some oiling, sees the struggle, but being caught in the bear trap is unable to get down. He therefore rings the bell at midnight, bringing the villagers to the church. The desperate but quick-witted Larabee declares that he found Ned with the money, but when Deacon Tidd comes down with the bear-trap on his foot, he tells the true story, which sends Larabee off to jail, where he belongs, so that justice is meted out to the wicked and several pretty romances culminate satisfactorily. -- Moving Picture World synopsis
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