When, on a prank, shimmy dancer Marcia Meadows visits bookworm Horace Tarbox in his Yale dormitory, Horace falls madly in love and follows her to New York where he and Marcia marry. Denounced by his wealthy father, Horace attempts to support Marcia through his writing, but all his manuscripts are rejected, and he is fired from every job.

Dr. Hugh Loring, whose hobby is heredity, has evolved the theory that physical or mental peculiarities of children reveal the parents. The doctor's intense desire for children is only equaled by his wife's aversion. On the occasion of the doctor admonishing his wife for being friendly with an admirer she leaves him, and when her child is born she swears Ruth Carden, an employee of her husband's, who has accompanied her, to secrecy, so that she may keep from the doctor his greatest joy. Mrs. Loring dies, and Ruth returns to the doctor's office, leaving the child in the care of the nurse. Three years later the nurse finds it necessary to give up the child, and the doctor, who has fallen in love with Ruth, is stunned, for he believes that the child is hers.

The valet of Lord Harold Varden, on a secret mission to our Government, has been murdered. Dick Holloway, a reporter, detailed to the story, calls on Lord Varden just as the latter feels the effects of poison administered to him. He takes the place of the nobleman when his American cousins come for him, and not only saves his lordship's papers, but captures the spies detailed to get them.

Mistaken for a famous jockey, a young man uses it to his advantage -- until he actually has to race a horse.

Silent version of the 1884 Helen Hunt Jackson novel originally ran 3 hours but all but 50 minutes of that are now lost.

Despite her love for penniless Dirck Mead, Lorraine marries wealthy Aaron Roth to save her family from financial ruin.

John Oxford owns a gambling hall in an Alaskan mining town, but it known far and wide as an honest man. However, one day he finds that in order to save the life of Doris Henry, who has come to Alaska to marry Wallace Towers, he has to cheat. It turns out that Wallace has incurred huge gambling losses and is being threatened by those to whom he owes the money, and they in turn are threatening Doris--who mistakenly blames John for the predicament that she and Wallace are in.