The Tattooed Arm

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Jack Trevor's father in a generous mood gives him a dollar and Jack hurries over to Evelyn Bradford's house to show his prize. Evelyn has been Jack's little sweetheart through all of her short life and what is his is hers as well. The children start out to spend the money and wander down on the water front to see the ships. In one chandler's shop an old seaman has set up his tattooing instruments and Jack decides to have his initials on his arm. He likes the effect so much that he persuades Evelyn to have her arm decorated with her initials and his own and with childish solemnity they plight their troth. Jack's father is a manufacturer and a discharged workman, to be revenged for his fancied for her little comrade but in vain and in attempting to beat of the abductor her knee is sprained. The police inquiry slowly draws the net about the workman and Jack, disguised as a girl, is taken aboard a ship bound for Australia. The man pays the captain to take the lad as cabin boy and all trace of Jack is lost to the detective's. Evelyn becomes a trained nurse and though the young interne makes ardent love to her she remains true for the time to the betrothal of baby days. But no word has come from Jack in fifteen years for he was cast away on the African coast and captured by savages. She yields to the young surgeon's plea, but even as she accepts the surgeon's love they are interrupted by an accident case. A sailor has been assaulted by footpads and his arm and head have been injured. The surgeon dresses the wound in the head while the nurse prepares to bandage the arm. She starts back as the tattoo marks are disclosed and she realizes that it is Jack come back at last. The old love floods back into her heart and the surgeon, appreciating the situation, takes back the ring he gave her to mark their engagement and hands it to Jack to replace upon the tiny finger as the sign of his own happiness.