The Fisherman's Bride

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In close proximity to the quickly improving little city of Astoria, Ore., noted for its fisheries, there lives old Skipper Stout and his daughter, Jennie. An old acquaintance, Jed Prouty, is anxious to form an alliance between his son, Hiram, and Jennie, the latter really being in love with John Todd, a fisher lad. Skipper Stout favors Hiram's suit, because of the apparent prosperity his energies have yielded him and consents to the match. This is agreed upon and seeing his daughter talking to John down on the beach, he and the two Proutys join them, only to find Jennie in the arms of John, a willing subject to John's honest pleading that she become his wife. With this condition of affairs confronting him, old Stout informs Todd of the betrothal he has just acquiesced in between his daughter and Hiram. Thereupon, Jennie, thus placed in a dilemma wherein she must choose, openly avows her love for Todd. The natural outcome is hasty words, bred of quickened tempers, and after a lively quarrel, and the wrenching of muscle against muscle. John hurries his sweetheart into a fishing-yawl nearby and pulls. A week later we find the young couple married, much to the chagrin of Hiram, whose father shares in his dismay. They then determine to revenge themselves on the unsuspecting young husband, and form a plot to entice him down to one of the wharf landings. Arriving at the wharf, he is engaged in conversation by the supposed buyer, and while thus engrossed, is beset by Hiram, his father and others. A coat is thrown deftly over his head, and after a fierce struggle for freedom, he is thrown aboard an awaiting tug boat, which immediately puts out into the sound. The engines of the tug are scarcely in motion, when Jennie, frantic with what she has just seen, and despite her father's attempted intervention, rushes to a nearby revenue office. Once there, she startles the occupants with a hasty recital of what has taken place. With authority derived from Uncle Sam they at once board a faster vessel, and taking the girl with them, start in pursuit. That a stern chase is a long one proves true in this instance. Yet they begin slowly but surely to overhaul the tug ahead, and just as John is about to be "shanghaied" aboard a large tramp steamer, the tug is boarded by the rescuing party, after an exchange of a few shots, and John is delivered to the welcome arms of his hysterical young wife. The absconders are made prisoners, and after alighting at the wharf left only a few hours before, the culprits are laced in stocks amid the hooting and jeering of the assembled throng of curious onlookers there to remain until the law's exacting is fulfilled.