On his wedding eve Henry Halleck opens a sealed envelope which has been handed down to each generation, and learns that the family is cursed with a lust for drink. He signs the pledge which bears the signatures of his fathers.
John Holden discovers a burglar in his house and shoots at the escaping thief. Warding, a detective, and the officer on the beat hear the shot and hurry to the scene. The detective finds a large diamond set on the library rug and concludes it has been lost from the thief's ring.
Ellinor, who was unofficially adopted as an orphan by 'Old Peter,' who maintained a lighthouse on a virtually deserted beach, has grown up wild and nearly silent. As she blossoms into full womanhood, she longs to know more about the world. One day a mutinous sailor swims to shore and declares that...
Paul, a blind basket weaver, plies his trade at a small seaside village. Anna, a cripple, is madly in love with the handsome young man. He does not know of her deformity and Dolly, who also loves him, is too tender-hearted to tell.
Uncle Tom and Eliza's child are sold to Haley, a slave dealer. When Eliza learns that her son is to be taken from her, she steals the boy and runs away.
A noted actor, appearing in the role Richelieu, stands at the stage entrance one evening and hears the confession of a conscience-stricken Italian, who mistakes him for a priest.
John Brown, the mate on a river steamboat, rescues a small boy from the clutches of a villainous deckhand, thereby gaining the roustabout's bitter enmity. Absorbed over the events of the day, the mate fails to bestow upon his wife the usual home-coming caress. Annoyed, she greets the coming of the...
A gang of thieves is captured and brought to justice. Some weeks later the woman of the party dies in prison and her baby, Jane, is adopted. Twenty years pass and Jane, grown to young womanhood, has an inherited propensity for stealing which she is unable to resist.
Chadwick, the overseer, aspires to win the hand of the beautiful Dorothy Jackson, who owns the plantation. The rough man does not appeal to her and she agrees to become the wife of Dick Patterson, a promising young attorney. Finally the overseer becomes so persistent that Dorothy finds it necessary...
