Being the story of the Morgans, a 19th-century Massachusetts whaling family, their tightly-knit Quaker community, and the dangerous adventures of an unwilling stowaway aboard one of the elder Morgan's harvest vessels.

The intrepid reporter and amateur sleuth Joseph Rouletabille becomes involved in the investigation of a hideous crime committed in a room painted yellow, whose door was locked from the inside…

Neglected by her workaholic husband Jack, Eileen Spencer begins an affair with novelist Carter Ballantyne. Their planned elopement is halted when Eileen learns that Jack has lost both his money and his eyesight, and she feels compelled to return to care for him. With her friend Dolly Page, Eileen cheats at cards amassing a fortune to send Jack to France for treatment. Carter reappears, threatening to expose her unless she submits to him. Intending merely to reason with Carter, Eileen gives him a key to her apartment, but Jack returns home unexpectedly and finds him there. At her birthday dinner, Eileen, in anticipation of Carter's plan to expose her publicly, confesses her guilt, whereas her husband and her friends forgive her.

Eleanor Leavenworth (Seena Owen) is about to be arrested for the murder of her rich bachelor uncle, and suspicion is cast on each member of the Leavenworth household until Raymond (Bradley Barker), an attorney in love with Eleanor, solves the mystery and produces the culprit, who confesses and falls to his death while trying to escape.

Bartender Billy Holliday loses his job for refusing to supply drinks to minors at the behest of his employer. In the little country town he wanders into looking for work he finds two elements, the wets and the drys. When he meets the daughter of the leader of the drys, he casts in his lot with them, and when the leader of the wet faction threatens vengeance, Billy is instantly on the job. At a meeting of prohibitionists, which the brewery element seeks to disrupt by the introduction of a number of roughnecks, Holliday takes the platform and nullifies their efforts with a fiery speech. He finally succeeds in putting the wet element out of business--and in winning the love of Edith Jason.

When Miriam Smith's devoutly religious aunt and uncle insist that she marry pious Simeon Althoff, she answers an ad in a matrimonial newspaper and runs away to New York to meet her correspondent. Upon learning that Miles Sprague, the man in the ad, is coming to claim her, Miriam gets cold feet and begs her experienced friend Kittie Swasher, the hotel telephone operator, for help. When Miles arrives, Kittie pretends that she is Miriam and the three go to a cabaret. Meanwhile, the detectives employed by Miriam's aunt and uncle to bring her home appear and arrest Kittie, thinking that she's Miriam. Simeon arrives soon after and identifies the real Miriam, who is then taken home and locked in her room. Kittie and Miles follow and rescue Miriam, who realizes that she has fallen in love with the man from her ad.