D. W. Griffith argued that the artistic significance of the cinema was rooted above all in its capacity to capture the contingent flow of the natural world in time. Nowhere is this more evident than in this beautifully concise Biograph melodrama from 1909, which elegantly connects characters and environments. This is particularly evident in the linked panning movements that bracket the film, situating the human drama in a broader context and demonstrating the spontaneously captured "wind in the trees" that Griffith later described as early cinema's signature achievement.