When stern Judge McClure gets into an argument with his younger brother John, a physical fight ensues in which the judge apparently kills John. In fear of the consequences, he runs off to the West and hires guide Cal Nelson to take him far into the desert. Along the way they meet Mary Jackson, and the judge, overcome by heat prostration, babbles out his secret.

Billy Grant, a wealthy young playboy, drunkenly crashes his car and appears near death. Afraid that his greedy and unpleasant relatives will get his estate, he convinces his nurse, Jane Brown, to marry him. When Billy regains his health, Jane finds herself in a situation she never imagined nor intended.

When Jack Dougan and Snatcher Nell, partners in crime as well as love, decide to purloin the gifts at the wedding of Madge Carr to James Cluney, Nell poses as a maid to gain entrance to the household. Soon after, articles begin to disappear and Madge's father, a kleptomaniac, begins to feel guilty, while the groom almost suspects himself.

Bela, reared by Indians, learns that she is a white orphan and runs away from the Indian village to avoid marrying a brave from the tribe. She determines to marry land prospector Sam Gladding, who resists her advances but later falls in love with Bela when an Indian sage gives him some advice.

Wondering cowboy Bart Andrews (played by Fred Thompson) gets arrested simply because a crooked sheriff is short on men for his chain gang. A chance visit to a rodeo on the way to jail, gives Bart a chance to demonstrate his bronco-busting skills, which results in the sheriff caving to pressure from a group of cowboys, to allow Bart to work on ranch, rather than joining the road gang. Finding himself in the right place at the right time, Bart is able to prevent the theft of a train full of cattle, but later ends up being accused of killing a station agent when he interrupts the ranch foreman robbing an express office. Bart is eventually able to bring the foreman to justice, and in a surprise twist, it turns out that he was in fact the real owner of the ranch he was working at!

A gambler runs a frontier town with an iron fist.

Disgusted when the police department fails to apprehend the murderer of her guardian, Henri Du Bois, Celeste decides to track down the criminal herself. Her only clue is a cuff link dropped near the scene of the crime on which a sphinx is engraved, and with it, she wanders through Paris' tough Moulin Noir district. When she notices a young man wearing a tie pin of identical design, she cultivates his acquaintance and eventually asks him to visit her in her home. His suspicious behavior there convinces Celeste that he is the guilty party, and although she has fallen in love with him, she has him arrested, whereupon she learns that he is Du Bois' missing son, Andre. Further detective work reveals that the real murderer is Celeste's rejected suitor, Raoul Laverne. Upon his confession, Andre is released and eventually marries Celeste.

To decide a wager, two young millionaires decide to take a vagrant from a lodging house and give him the name and wealth of one of the pair, to see what he will do. By mistake they seize upon a young newspaper reporter down on his luck. The reporter enters into the spirit of the idea and wins the girl of his love and gets a better job on his old paper.

Mynderse Van Dyun, a wealthy old New York aristocrat, has one goal in life, to see his granddaughter Catherine and grandson Pell married; for, although they are cousins, the marriage would perpetuate the family name. Catherine, however, is in love with Paul La Farge and detests her drug-addicted cousin, who seduces and then secretly marries her maid, Nora Duffy.

Betsy Shelton, an orphan since early childhood, lives in Myrtleville with her aunt, and is engaged to marry Calvin Stone, a young lawyer. Betsy's brother, Dick, ostensibly working in New York to recover the family fortune, becomes involved with one Roger Enderleigh, a shyster promoter, who because of crooked dealings, is forced to flee from the postal authorities. He induces Dick to take him to Myrtleville, where Dick introduces Enderleigh as a prosperous banker promoting a munition plant, thus swindling the townsmen.