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Naomi Sterling and John Bancroft are lovers. The girl loves frivolous things and Bancroft, a divinity student, finally estranges himself from her by his continual efforts to preach to her. Attracted by Hugh Wiley, a gambler, from a nearby city, Naomi finally elopes with him and eventually becomes known as the gambling queen. The girl's one ambition in life is to hoard up her wealth against the day when she shall lose her beauty and her popularity. Bancroft has plunged into religious work. He has become famous as an evangelist and has been trusted with the combination to the vault of the great tabernacle over which he presides. Learning this fact, Wiley inflames the mind of Naomi against Bancroft on the false ground that he has spurned her because of her life. He plans to have Naomi lure Bancroft to her gambling palace on a pretense, to overpower the minister while he is in there, steal the combination and loot the tabernacle. Furthermore, Wiley arranges to have the executive board of the tabernacle informed when the minister is in the gambling den, and to have the place raided by the police while he and his pal, McCarthy, rob the tabernacle. But the minister is too strong to succumb to the temptations of Naomi when he reaches her apartment, and his spiritual power wins the repentance of his temptress. Wiley, realizing that he is losing, springs upon Bancroft from behind and gets the combination away from him while his confederate alarms the police and the executive board according to the plan. But Naomi spirits the minister away through a secret passage, rushes to the tabernacle too late to prevent the robbery, and makes the great sacrifice of replacing the stolen money by her own ill-gotten hoard before the bewildered police and board officials arrive at the vault. In the final great moment of spiritual exaltation, Naomi has realized the greatness of Bancroft's love and of his power. Meanwhile Wiley, in an attempt to steal the loot from McCarthy, has wrecked the automobile in which they are fleeing and is killed.

Tom, the rambunctious member of the Sawyer clan, takes it upon himself to teach the goody-goody boy of Hannibal, Missouri a lesson and, as Huckleberry Finn, his free-spirited best friend watches, pummels his foe to defeat. At school clever Tom makes mischief a regular practice, but as long as the punishment lands him next to his beloved Becky Thatcher, he remains carefree. After he is unfairly accused of his brother Sid's misdeed, Tom runs away with Huck and Joe Harper. Disguised as pirates, the trio builds a raft and sails down the Mississippi to a deserted island. Back at home, Tom's frantic Aunt Polly calls for a search, and cannons are fired into the river. When the search yields nothing, the boys are declared dead and a funeral is planned. At first tempted to reveal himself, Tom decides later to partake in his own memorial service, and as the townspeople mourn, he and his friends appear in the back of the church. Overcome with relief, Becky and Aunt Polly embrace Tom, forgetting to scold him for his mischief.

A fantasy from Ibsen's verse drama. Ne'er-do-well and braggart Peer Gynt has many adventures in varied countries, making and losing money, gaining fortune at others' expense, until he finds salvation in the love of Solveig.

Rev. Dr. Penfield Sturgis, of fashionable St. Martins-in-the-Lane, finds himself face to face with Jane Bartlett, a grand opera prima donna whose opera he has denounced on grounds of morality, and who comes to his very vestry room to make him "eat his sermon word for word." Out of the encounter a strange acquaintance develops, Jane Bartlett interested through vindictive reasons, the rector through the challenge to his church. She prevails upon him to visit the notorious opera, which but deepens his previous convictions, but meanwhile he discovers a surprising humanity in the woman herself. Just as it is beginning to dawn upon him that maybe he takes himself a shade too seriously, word comes that the Mayor has closed "Zaporah" on the strength of his own condemnatory sermon. Repentant, Sturgis decides to apologize in an open letter to the newspapers, at which his vestry and congregation, already perturbed by the ascendancy of the Bartlett woman, are up in arms. To preserve her dignity the young rector offers to marry her, and she accepts him, thus at last making him "eat his sermon word for word," as she had set out to do. But her vanity appeased, Jane Bartlett proceeds to make peace between her young rector and Georgine Darigal, daughter of the rector emeritus and formerly his fiancée, and the reconciliation assured, Jane Bartlett gracefully withdraws.

Bob Van Buren's rescue of an upper-class Turkish girl and her duenna in Constantinople when they are waylaid by robbers paves the way for a romance between them. The romance progresses rapidly despite the hullabaloo raised by Demetra's father and by the Turk fiancé he is trying to force upon her; but the very thought of a girl, so highly educated, so gifted with needle and loom, so famously graceful as a dancer ending up in a harem instead of a respectable home, drives Bob Van Buren to desperation. At length he persuades Demetra to elope with him to America, where Demetra could be married at his mother's in New York. Getting wind of it, the malicious Osman hires a band of ruffians who make away with Bob Van Buren on the very eve of departure. With her young American mysteriously vanished, and the day of her now-all-the-more-odious wedding to Osman drawing near, Demetra can stand it no longer, and taking her duenna, flees to a cousin's in New York on the P. and O. boat on which Bob had reserved sailings. Osman pursues the little refugee, corners her in New York, and with oriental cunning sets a trap into which Demetra walks blindly. Having her in his toils again Osman summons a second Turkish priest and is just forcing Demetra to her knees before him when the door bursts open and in rushes Bob Van Buren, who had finally escaped the dungeon in Constantinople to which he had been consigned. He routes Osman and takes Demetra to his mother's. Mrs. Van Buren suggested that the lovers wait until September, but their hearts were set on June. And so, as you may very well imagine, June it was.

Mrs. Helen Barker, mother of son Jack, is married to Jerrold Scott. When Jack finishes college he returns home and is made a partner of his stepfather in the firm of Scott and Son, and at Scott's request he adopts his stepfather's surname. Scott and Son's reception room is full of girls waiting in answer to an advertisement for a stenographer. One pretty girl opens the wrong door and enters the room where Jack is waiting for his father. She and Jack get into conversation and she tells him of her troubles in finding a position; he tells her that it is his first day in business. Scott, entering, greets his son and shows him the sign on the door including him in the firm. Jack tells him that the girl is Gertie Meyer, who is looking for a position and who came to the wrong door. She is sent to the waiting room and Jack is taken to the auditing department to get his first training. The bookkeeper, Crane, who has been with the firm 20 years, and knows Scott's requirements for a secretary, selects those who are competent but lacking in physical charms, and sends them in for interview. One of these is Miss Wiggins, but she is too clever and is sent out to interview Crane. He retains her for some extra work on his own account. Scott, coming to the door, selects Gertie and dismisses the others. He asks her many personal questions, but nothing about her efficiency, and accepts her at a higher salary than she asked of him. Gertie, delighted with her position, begs her mother to leave the laundry where she is working, and brings her two small brothers home from the orphan asylum. All goes well the first week, except that with the first dictation Gertie makes a hopeless failure of the letters, and when she cries over her failure, Scott, in a fatherly way, puts his arms around her, and tells her that it was a difficult letter, and he will straighten it out. When he goes out, and while Gertie is making the corrections, Miss Wiggins slips into the private office and warns Gertie about Scott, tells her just what to expect, and asks her if he has taken her to luncheon yet. Gertie resents this and warmly defends her benefactor. When Scott returns and learns that Gertie has no money to pay for her luncheon, he persuades her to go to a restaurant and lunch with him. She dissents, but finally goes. She is awed by the fashionable people, the music, and the odd names on the menu. She refuses to have a cocktail, but Scott drinks. Seeing Paul Montgomery, his daughter's fiancé, in the restaurant, he feigns sudden illness to avoid speaking to him, gives Gertie a $10 bill and tells her he must rush off to meet an engagement and for her to pay for the meal. By the end of the first month at her position, Gertie has often dined with her employer, but her sense of propriety never ceases to be outraged by his amorous demonstrations. In the meantime, Jack Scott, who has had a growing interest in her since the morning she applied for the position, declares his love for her. and asks her to marry him. In her perplexity, Gertie goes to the Y.W.C.A. to call upon Miss Wiggins, who tells her to marry Jack if he really loves her, and receive no more attentions from the father. Gertie resolves to do this, even though she lose her position. The next day Scott asks Gertie to remain at the office in the evening, to do some work for him. Jack, not seeing Gertie leave the office, secretly waits for her. When the other employees are gone, Scott locks the door, seizes Gertie in his arms, and declares his love for her. In the struggle which follows, Gertie screams for help. Jack smashes through the door and defends the girl. Scott does not know of their love, and orders Jack out. In the excitement Gertie slips out. Jack, not knowing her address, hires detectives to locate her. Gertie, arriving home, is denounced by her mother for bringing the family to poverty again, and threatens to go to Scott's house herself and take a lawyer with her. Gertie goes out to a telephone and calls Jack, and at his request meets him at his home. Together they wait for his mother and sister, but when they come they do not receive Gertie with open arms. Scott and his lawyer Stuart are in the library discussing the affair when the butler gives away the fact that Jack and his fiancée are in the house with Mrs. Scott. Mrs. Meyers, enraged that detectives should be sent to her house, and fearing that the Scott millions have led away her little girl, bursts in and denounces Scott in her broken German-English. Stuart is authorized to provide financial aid for the Meyer family, and when Scott learns that Jack has not told the whole story to Mrs. Scott, he forgives everything, thanks his lucky stars that his wife does not know his perfidy, and accepts the situation in a truly happy way.

Little Doris Calhoun, of a wealthy English family, makes a playmate of Pierre, a crippled gypsy boy, and drifts away with him and the gypsy band on their wanderings and is seen no more. In twelve years she becomes a great favorite with the gypsies, who have named her Kilmeny, but rather than be married to a brutal fellow, Barouche, she flees the camp. Kilmeny is found wandering in the woods, by Lord Leigh, and he persuades the rather reluctant Lady Leigh to give the ragged little wild thing shelter in the manor. The child of camps and trails at first finds naive delight in mysteries like electric light switches, bath tubs with fickle showers and rugs upon which she can slide beautifully over the hardwood floors. But long dresses trip her, the butler is a thundercloud, and at night she cannot sleep in the closed-in room unless she pulls her little white bed to the window. To make it worse, Lady Leigh becomes jealous of her husband's protegee, and so does her brother, Bob Meredith, a dashing chap with whom Kilmeny is very much in love. The sensitive girl who cannot bear to hurt birds, beasts or any living thing, cannot bear to hurt her benefactors either, and so in a pathetic self-sacrifice turns her back upon the manor and returns to the angry gypsies, and to Barouche. But just as the gypsy wedding ceremony is about to begin the father of the long-lost Doris Calhoun appears and calls a halt, and proves the beautiful Kilmeny is his own daughter. To prove it, he produces the poor cripple, Pierre, who has braved the wrath of the clan to balk the brutal Barouche and carry word to Kilmeny's father of her whereabouts.

To escape the dreary formality of her born life, Drucilla marries a missionary, Ferdinand Smith, and goes with him to Africa. Here her life proves anything but happy. Denied the pleasures enjoyed by most girls of her age, she endures her husband's cold severity as long as possible and then leaves him, returning to America, where she visits her old school friend, Letitia Proudfoot. It is while attending a reception with Letitia that she meets the poet, Forrest Smith, whose attentions are welcome after the austerity of the frigid Ferdinand. A friendship springs up between them which soon ripens into love. On the news that Ferdinand has been lost at sea, she and the poet marry. Love in a cottage is hardly more satisfactory to pretty Drucilla than life among the heathen. Forrest is not a good provider, and when she threatens a suit for non-support, he disappears, leaving a note of farewell pinned to his coat, which is found at the edge of the sea. Free again, Drucilla for the first time really falls in love, this time with Frank Smith, a wealthy club man, athletically inclined. Frank turns out to possess a very jealous nature. Drucilla puts up with his doubts and suspicions patiently, but before long a climax arrives which precipitates a suit for divorce. Drucilla welcomes this conclusion to her unhappy domestic affairs with relief and sets off with Letitia in search of repose. Now it happens that Ferdinand was not lost at sea, and Forrest did not commit suicide, and each develops a desire to be reunited with his wife. Forthwith they set out in search of her, and eventually meet at the same hotel. Here also comes Frank, who, too, has undergone a change of heart. Thus instead of finding repose, as she hoped, Drucilla is plunged deeper than ever into marital tribulations. Her tender heart prompts her to make up with Frank. But no sooner is this done than Forrest puts in an appearance and makes his claim. Drucilla cries, "I am a bigamist," but belated Ferdinand, entering the scene, answers, "No, you are a trigamist." Which one of the husbands will Drucilla take, and how will she evade the law? This is the question. The clever authors have so arranged that this will be a guess until the very last, and then it ends just right for everybody.

Young boxer Jack Ranney agrees to challenge 'Young Kilroy' and knocks him out with his first punch. When he is told that Kilroy is dead, Jack hurriedly heads West and finds a job on a ranch, boasting to all the fellows that he is a killer; unimpressed, they call him a greenhorn. Meanwhile, Jack's sweetheart Mary learns that Kilroy is alive, and she heads West to tell Jack the news, arriving just in time to see him single-handedly save the ranch from a raid by the notorious Lopez Cabrillo and his entire gang.

Severely injured in an attempted getaway, safe cracker Slippy McGee is taken in by Father De Rance and nursed back to health by Mary Virginia after his leg is amputated. Under the influence of the kindness shown him, Slippy reforms and falls in love with Mary Virginia, although she intends to marry Lawrence Mayne. When George Inglesby attempts to blackmail Mary Virginia into marrying him, Slippy uses his skill one last time to obtain some incriminating letters from a safe.

In 1840, while California is ruled by Mexico, American settlers are in constant danger from Mexican marauders. After a band of Mexican soldiers led by American renegade George Granville kill the parents of Leonardo Davis, he vows vengeance and begins a career as a masked highwayman who terrorizes the Mexican offenders. Because Leonardo gives his plunder to those Americans who have been robbed, and he protects the women, children, poor, and helpless from attacks, he becomes known as "Captain Courtesy." At the San Fernando Mission, Leonardo falls in love with Eleanor, the orphaned ward of Father Reinaldo. For Eleanor's sake, Leonard renounces his mission of vengeance and joins the California Riflemen. When Granville learns about a cache of gold hidden at the Mission, he organizes an attack. Leonardo crashes through the stained glass window on his horse and rides to General Stephen Kearny's troops encamped in Los Angeles, who then rout the Mexicans. When Granville boldly admits that he slew the Davises, Leonardo fights him, but Eleanor persuades him to spare Granville's life.

The adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

"Sunshine Molly'' enters the oil town in search of work. Her first good deed is to help old Pete, whom she had met on the road, to carry his heavy bundle. She is seen to do this by "Bull" Forrest. Old Pete shows her the boarding house and she applies for work. Mrs. O'Brien and her daughter, Patsy, a slovenly girl, who have to do all the work, are tired out and seeing in Molly a willing worker, hire her and she starts in at once. "Bull" Forrest enters the dining room at this point and announces: "There's a new female in town." He is reproved by old Pete as Molly enters with food, and Bull in a spirit of bravado pinches her. Molly is furious, breaks a plate on his head and tells him to keep his hands to himself. Bull leaves the dining room in a rage. Pat O'Brien, whose wife runs the boarding house, owns an oil well in which he has sunk all his money and is greatly worried because it shows no sign of producing. Old Pete, now very weak and near the end, makes Bull a witness to his will in which he leaves his land and all on it to Molly. In the meantime Pat's well turns out to be a gusher and the O'Brien family move to town and enter society. The Widow Budd takes charge of the eating house during their absence and falls hopelessly in love with all her boarders, who show a preference for her daughter. At this juncture Mrs. O'Brien engages a professional matchmaker to find a man of family to marry her daughter. She is successful and on making known her intention of giving a reception to announce the engagement. Pat thinks it will be a good chance to give his old cronies in the oil fields a treat, so he secretly invites them to the reception. The night arrives and Mrs. O'Brien and her daughter, whom she now calls Patricia, are flattered by the large attendance of polite society, when who should file in but the workmen from the oil fields. Consternation follows, and Pat's wife is furious that he should have dared to invite such common people. Pat, angry at the insult to his cronies, departs with them to the oil fields, leaving his wife and daughter in sore straits, as the fiancée demands a marriage settlement. Bull Forrest has been shunned by his fellow workmen on account of his insult to Molly, and worried so over it that his nerves became affected, his sight troubled him and caused him to act so queerly that he was thought to be insane, and all avoided him. Molly discovered him stricken senseless one night, took him to his room and doctored him and his hate turned to love. Mrs. O'Brien with Patricia and her fiancée were compelled to follow Pat to Oilfield and on arriving were given a cool reception by the workmen, and the fiancée in retaliation tells them that he knows "Sunshine Molly" and that she has been a jailbird. The men are enraged at this insult to one whom they all think so highly of, and hurry him into the dining room where Molly is and demand to hear what he knows about her. Molly says that he is quite right as she was arrested once for attacking a man who would not keep his hands to himself, and pointing to him, tells the men that they will find a scar on his left shoulder. Bull tears the clothes away and reveals the scar, the men at once kick him out and he swears to be revenged. That night he sets fire to the oil field, which is destroyed, and Bull seeing him do the dastardly deed, pursues him to an old derrick where he climbs to the top, pursued by Bull. A part of the ladder breaks and the traducer is dashed to the ground and killed. Bull is carried to the boarding house and placed in Molly's room where he is tenderly cared for by Molly. Overcome by her kindness he sends a note to her by Pat asking her to have someone else wait on him, as "he can't keep his hands off her." Molly answers the note in person and tells him that loving each other as they do, it would not be long before, "a man can lay his hands on his wife."

When Betty arrives from the Convent to visit her uncle's family they are careful to hide all the extreme low-necked gowns and other worldly things lest they shock the devout convent girl. Instead of shocking, Betty finds them fascinating and they install in her a desire to learn more about the fascinations of the world. When Jim Denning proposes to her, she says she loves him but she must see the world first. Angrily he leaves her as she sits beside the fireplace, whose dreamy flames inspire her to tempt a knowledge of things unknown to her. Out into the world she goes, where she sees and learns many things but with pangs and heartache. At a vital moment when she is about to faint dead away, the faithful Jim arrives and catches her in his arms. Betty awakens to find it has all been just a dream, and faithful Jim has no problem convincing her of the full meaning of a home and that the world and its false promises are not for her.

The race of the wealthy Gordon family in their crack yacht, "The Yankee Girl," to close an option on a valuable copper concession in Latin America and the political intrigue of the desperate James Seavey of the rival Pacific Copper crowd to prevent their arriving on time culminates when the quick-witted Jessie Gordon braves old President Ambroce Castroba, whom Seavey has bought out, in his own palace. The breezy blarney of the pretty North American girl goes to Castroba's head, as does the champagne she fools him into thinking she is drinking with him, and he forgets his agreement with Seavey and accepts the $5,000 first payment on the copper property, even lending her, to make it up, $50 which she had to pay one of his grafting customs officers. But before the transaction can be binding another final payment of $60,000 must be made in twenty-four hours, and Seavey redoubles his sinister efforts to frustrate it. He has already had Philip Gordon, the father, kidnapped by the ruthless Morales and his bandits and held prisoner in a secret hacienda in the interior, and he proceeds to establish a quarantine about "The Yankee Girl," so Jessie Gordon cannot possibly return and get the $60,000 which is on board. Jack Lawrence, a former sweetheart and now United States consul, executes an expert flank movement, however, by purchasing the yacht outright for his government, and when Seavey presumes to question his right to take possession he resorts to collar-and-elbow tactics and hurls the plotter bodily into the sea. Securing the $60,000 from the safe Lawrence makes a dash for shore in the launch, meeting Jessie who single-handed has rescued her father, and together they close the copper deal with President Castroba. The ensuing love scene is strictly Jessie Gordon's and Jack Lawrence's business.

John Humperdink Stover, otherwise known as "The Varmint" for his pestiferousness or as "Dink" when in special favor, was expelled from a boarding school and sent to Lawrenceville Academy. On the stage on the way to the school he meets a silent man whom Dink sizes up for a salesman and he proceeds to wax eloquent on the subject of his past career and the reason he was expelled from his previous school. The "salesman" is actually the professor of Latin known to the boys as the "Roman." Dink boasts that in a week he will have the boys at the school in his power. A strange uneasiness grips him when he sees that he does not make just the impression he expected. Little by little he succeeds in making himself the most thoroughly disliked and abhorred person on the campus. Dink rises a point in his schoolmates' estimation when he discovers on reporting to the Latin class that the instructor is no other than the traveling man of the stage on the day of his arrival, and in order to make good some of the many boasts he made on that day fakes the translation. The Roman, possessed of a good sense of humor, compliments "Dink" on his performance, much to everyone's surprise. The first girl to attract Dink Stover is the pretty daughter of the Roman, considerably older than he is. After a short and one-sided flirtation, Miss McCarty becomes engaged to another man and Dink is desperate until some new neckwear arrives at the local haberdasher's and diverts his mind from his agony. As a result of his neglect of study, Dink finds himself about to be dropped in school for falling off in his studies. He is to have a private examination at the Roman's house. Stover decides to cheat, and arranges with the Tennessee Shad and MacNooder to overturn a large water cooler outside the Roman's door and other devices to get him out of the way. To his utter dismay, the Roman goes out of the room and stays, thus putting him on his honor. Dink signs his name at the head of the blank paper and is dumbfounded when, upon the Roman's return, he seems to scan the blank sheets closely and says : "I think this will about pass you, Stover." The two discover that they had been friends from the first and Dink really comes into his own when the Roman explains that as he is now an upperclassman, he must set a good example for the younger boys.

"Little Sunset" is the red-haired, fiery-tempered son of a minor league baseball player named Jones. The boy worships Gus Bergstrom, the star outfielder for the Apaches, and is overjoyed to learn one day that his father has been signed to the "Terrible Swede's" team. Following the death of Little Sunset's mother, the boy accompanies his father on the road as the team's mascot. He and Gus become great friends, and when Little Sunset falls ill, the "Terrible Swede" plays miserably. At an important game, Gus makes a serious mistake, and the manager angrily upbraids him. Weary of baseball after fifteen years as a player, Gus takes the opportunity to quit the team and return home to tend to his business affairs. Hearing that the team is in trouble, however, he rejoins the Apaches and leads them to a pennant victory. Little Sunset, who had been outraged when Gus deserted the team, finally decides to forgive his pal.

Nicknamed "Wild Olive," Miriam Strange learns that her mother was an Indian, she moves to a hut near an Allegheny lumber camp. Norrie Ford, fresh from college, visits his uncle, the bullying boss of the camp, and meets Miriam. After his uncle is murdered with a knife found hidden under Norrie's mattress, Norrie is sentenced to die. He escapes a guard and, after staying a night in Miriam's hut, leaves for Buenos Aires with her letter of introduction for employment. Although he vowed to marry her, after his letters to "Wild Olive" return undelivered, Norrie, sporting a beard and an assumed name, becomes engaged to Evie Wayne, Miriam's stepsister. When Norrie is sent to be his firm's New York manager, he meets Miriam again. She sacrifices her love and agrees to marry lawyer Charles Conquest, if he will prove Norrie's innocence. After Evie learns about Norrie's past and breaks the engagement, the murderer makes a deathbed confession. Conquest releases Miriam when he sees that she loves Norrie.

To obtain an increase in his income from his wealthy uncle, Charles Shackleton must stop his wild bachelor ways and marry. Charles proposes to Lucy Norton, but her father refuses his permission. Undaunted, Charles tells his uncle he has married and receives his increased allowance. A year later the uncle announces an upcoming visit, and Charles begins a frantic search for a temporary wife, offering Jane, the maid, five hundred dollars to play the part of Mrs. Shackleton. Secretly married to William, the butler, Jane undertakes the role without her husband's knowledge, causing him much confusion and jealousy. When the uncle demands to see "the baby," Jane snatches one from an unsuspecting washerwoman, who later catches the uncle with her child and calls the police on him. Further complications lead to Charles' pleading proposal to Lucy and then finally to the truth, which leaves everyone satisfied.

Stella Benton, a young society girl who has lost her beautiful voice through the death of her father, goes to live with her brother Charles, in the lumber camp. Charles Benton is having a struggle to make both ends meet, and when his cook quits, he makes his sister do the work for the hundred men in the lumber camp. Jack Fyfe, a neighboring lumber man, meets Stella and gradually falls in love with her, but love is not reciprocated. Seeing that she is being overworked, Fyfe offers to marry her, in spite of the fact that she does not love him. A child is born of this loveless marriage, and the couple are reasonably happy, until Walter Monahan, a wealthy lumberman, begins to make love to Stella. She gradually becomes tired of her husband, and when the child dies, decides to leave him. Her voice returns, and she makes a substantial success as a concert singer. Monahan, who has professed love for her, becomes indifferent, but she will not return to Fyfe, in spite of his pleadings. Monahan, jealous of Fyfe's success, sets fire to his holdings and is caught in the act. Friends telephone this fact to Stella, and she immediately returns to the lumber camp, and there, at their home she finds Jack, heartbroken, as his holdings are on fire and there is nothing but a heavy rain which could save them. She comes to him and offers to use her own money to retrieve his lost fortune, and as she goes into his arms, the heavy downpour of rain comes and they are safe.

The story tells of the troubles started by the fondness for gaiety of three mature French judges. With an eye to securing his good graces, they enjoy losing an occasional game of whist to their superior, Judge Galipaux. M. Galipaux's life burden is an ambitious wife. An escapade with the leading lady of a theatrical troupe, Mlle. Gobette, lands the three judges on the carpet for a severe reprimand. The offending actress is evicted from the hotel. Like an inspiration, a way out of their predicament comes to one of the offenders. That night on returning from seeing his wife on her train to Paris, M. Galipaux finds his house occupied by a strange but very beautiful woman, who refuses to leave. Unexpectedly M. Gaudet, the handsome and irreproachable Minister of Justice, arrives. He is fascinated by Gobette whom he believes to be Mme. Galipaux. Still posing as Mme. Galipaux, Gobette comes to Paris to call upon him. Scenting a possible scandal, Marius, the head usher, lays a trap. Mlle. Gobette calls and the trap is sprung. From then on events crowd quickly upon poor Gaudet, but through humorous situations and startling perplexities he remains undaunted to emerge triumphant.

Becky Knight's parents, simple shopkeepers, have denied themselves necessities so that their daughter can attend an exclusive boarding school. Becky, ashamed of her parents' background, pretends that she is as wealthy as her classmates. At Christmas she is invited to the home of one of the girls, where she meets Dr. Tom Fielding, who proposes to her. Tom discovers the truth about Becky's parents when, on a hunting expedition in a nearby town, he is called to care for Becky's sick mother. After chiding Becky for her deceit, Tom leaves, and Becky, learning of her father's desperate financial position, is forced to accept a job as the masked dancer at Ross Benson's roadhouse. On the last night of her engagement, Tom discovers Becky struggling with Benson and learns that she had been forced to dance in order to save her father. Becky's sacrifice overcomes Tom's misgivings and the two are married.

Nell, a beautiful mountain girl, is a member of the Serviss family, rivals of the neighboring Rutherford family. Nell is engaged to Jim Serviss, who is the head of their clan, but when, by accident, she meets a stranger who has come to stay with the Rutherfords, they become infatuated. The stranger spends much of his time examining and chipping away at rocks, causing an intense curiosity among the mountaineers, who suspect that he is a "revenuer." When Nell learns that the stranger is searching for radium, she shows him a deposit rich in ore located near the Serviss still. On the night of a big dance, the Serviss still is burned by revenue officers and the mountain people are convinced that the stranger is to blame. Nell rushes to the Rutherford cabin to warn the stranger who is revealed to be Rolf Rutherford. When Jim arrives, Nell saves Rolf's life by telling Jim that she will marry the stranger. Soon after Jim leaves, however, Nell goes after him and admits that it is only he who she loves and that she lied to save him from committing murder.

Bashful stenographer Bunker Bean ( Jack Pickford ), works for wealthy businessman Jim Breede by day and by night theosophist Prof. Balthasar, who convinces Bean that he is the reincarnation of Napoleon and, more remotely, of the great Egyptian king Ramses. His courage much bolstered by this revelation, Bean begins to deport himself with unaccustomed dignity and becomes a regular visitor to old Breede's estate, where he successfully courts the boss's daughter ( Louise Huff ), "The Flapper." With his $10,000 inheritance, Bean invests in a financial venture that nets him millions and purchases the alleged mummy of Ramses from the professor. After his marriage to The Flapper, Bean learns that the professor is a charlatan, and realizes that it is the belief in one's own strength of character that leads to success.