James Young

Billy Emerson and Mildred Girard are secretly engaged to be married after Billy graduates from West Point and becomes a lieutenant. A very serious setback to their tentative understanding occurs when Mr. Girard loses heavily in a stock transaction that places himself under obligations to his friend Morley, whose son Paul, is anxious to marry Mildred.

Robert Strickland, the self-confessed murderer of Gerald Trask, refuses to defend himself on the witness stand. His attorney, however, cross-examines Strickland's wife.

During the Franco-Prussian War, a violin teacher gets separated from his daughter. He spends years wandering across Europe looking for her.

The Baron Lafitte is in love with and proposes to Adelaide Burton, daughter of Andrew Burton, a wealthy manufacturer. Clara Lane, a newspaper reporter, has been assigned to watch the movements of the Baron. She is further instructed to make a scoop of their movements. Tom Drake is in love with Clara, and is her persistent follower throughout.

Keen competition is aroused among a group of young artists in New York City by the announcement of a valuable prize for the greatest portrait of the year, six months being given as the time limit of the competition.

A convivial evening at Hoag's Tavern is interrupted by a young companion, William Fentise, declaring to the assembled company that he is very much in love with Sylvia, known as "Cherry," the beautiful daughter of Mr. Gray, a wealthy resident of their town. He conspires with some of the bolder spirits of the company to hold up the stage in which Mr. Gray and his daughter are homeward bound to the King George Inn, he will then dash up, drive the "robbers" away single handed and claim the fair lady.

A scientist resurrects his dead daughter, only to realize she now lacks a soul.

Eric Temple is a composer whose rival, both in romance and work, is Sir Geoffrey Pomfret , a nobleman with few scruples. The woman they both love is Margaret, the daughter of Lord Neville. To get rid of his competition, Pomfret tells Lord Neville that his wife, Lady Neville, is in love with Eric. Then, when Eric is attacked by thugs and lays unconscious in a hospital, he steals his opera too.

Advised by his friends to seek a second wife so that his children, Helen and Dolores, may know a mother's care, Sir Edward Tilbury marries Phyllis, the daughter of Lady Olivia Gower, a leading social light in Calcutta.

To start a little in advance of our story, Lord Rintoul, of the English nobility, finds a little Gypsy girl three years old, who had been deserted by her parents. Fifteen years later, Gavin Dishart, the Little Minister, receives an appointment, his first, at Thrums, Scotland. This was made possible through the self-sacrifices of his widowed mother, to educate him for the ministry. The community of Thrums is made up of weavers, who work hard, have little and accomplish much. They are ultra-religious and look upon their pastor with such reverence that he is a little lower than the angels. While naturally intelligent, they are grounded in dogma and intolerance. Just after the Little Minister takes charge of the "Auld Licht Kirk" and the Manse, the weavers resent a reduction, by the manufacturers, in their pay and a strike is declared.