Fifteenth entry in the Leather Pushers series of two-reel shorts.
A father-and-son team of cons gamble their firm’s assets. The son is caught investing money that doesn't belong to him and is indicted on a swindling charge. The plot gets spicy when the District Attorney handling the case is his former sweetheart's husband. This situation gives the DA an opportunity to prosecute his romantic rival.
Jim Crosby, the product of a broken home, becomes a gangster and goes to prison. Meanwhile, Ann Payton, an heiress, converts a saloon into a mission. She is engaged to her father's secretary, Temple Vaughn, a gambler. Jim is released from prison and seeks shelter at the mission. Temple becomes indebted to gambler Phil Johnson and is forced to arrange a crooked poker game involving some of his wealthy friends. Jim overhears the plot and, realizing that Temple is Ann's fiancé, robs the poker game and puts a check Temple forged into Temple's own pocket.
After watching her mother die gradually from a broken heart, Roberta, an illegitimate child, decides to seek vengeance from her father Bradley, who ran away before she was born. Bradley is wealthy now, and so Roberta secures a job as his secretary and schemes to ruin his financial empire.
Finding himself penniless, Lawrence Ashmore, whose late father was ruined on the stock exchange, obtains a position as a reporter. Ashmore is assigned to investigate the reported fatal illness of Jesse Craven, one of Wall Street's financial monarchs.
For Nita Valyez, who is half-Spanish and half-Irish, Carlos represents potential violence and danger, two things to which she is both attracted and repelled. In contrast, she has only a passing interest in Big Jim, the town's honest, good-hearted sheriff. Then, after Carlos kills a faro dealer, he forces Nita to make an escape with him.
Hartley, fascinated by the vampish Leonie, steals and serves a term in prison. Not satisfied with this downfall, Leonie again works her womanly charms upon Dr. Gerald, who is engaged to Johanna, the adopted daughter of Dr. McLean. Learning of the woman's designs on the young doctor, Hartley denounces her in Gerald's presence. In response, Gerald foolishly renounces Johanna and his friendship with Dr. McLean. However, when Leonie discovers that Johanna is her own daughter whom she had deserted as a child, she becomes conscience-stricken, gives up the young man and begs forgiveness.
Priscilla Worth, an innocent country girl, goes to the city to visit her aunt, who has sent for her, thinking that her childlike simplicity will afford a welcome relief to Vincent Morgan, a wealthy bachelor and man-about-town. The plan works, but soon after Vincent and Priscilla's marriage, Vincent, besieged by his friends to return to his gay life and suspicious of his wife's relationship with Durant--an artist who has painted her portrait--yields to temptation.
Montgomery Seaton, one of the idle rich, pays more attention to his friends' business than to his marital situation.
Rethna works hard to organize her fellow factory employees against the miserly, uncaring owner, Henry Burke. Then, realizing that she needs money to fight Burke, she begins an affair with his unscrupulous son Harry.
The defense attorney who was unable to obtain the acquittal of an innocent young man concocts a complicated and diabolical scheme to get revenge on the prosecutor.
16th episode in the first 'Leather Pushers' series of two-reel boxing shorts.
Based on the poem of the same name by Alexander Pushkin.
Twilight
The Fankony Cafe
Stranded in the small town of Buckeye Junction young actress Madge Joy crawls upon a load of hay and falls asleep. Knocked unconscious when young farmer Robert Deep hitches up the wagon not realizing she’s inside she awakes in the Deep living room. "Ma" Deep takes to her at once, but old “Pa” Deep looks at her sternly. Claiming to be a runaway orphan rather than an actress she becomes a member of the family. Falling for Madge Robert confesses he dreams of being a playwright, that night his sister Susan, who has run away to be an actress, reappears. Pa Deep is furious when he finds out his daughter has been on the stage, but Madge reveals that she is herself an actress threatening to go away with Robert unless he makes up with his daughter. Eventually Madge finds fame in New York with Robert following with a play he knows is right.
In a jewelry store, Grace Norris, a wealthy girl, unnoticed by the salesman, absent-mindedly takes a vanity case. She is seen by Fred Wright, who thinks she stole it.
Lisza Tapenko (Bara) is governess in the household of Prince Arbasoff (Charles Clary). After the death of his wife, Lisza and he become involved, but because of the difference in social station he refuses to marry her. Lisza's former lover, Vassya (Richard Ordynski), convinces her to join the revolution and she goes off to the group headquarters in Switzerland. But the prince's little boy begs to have Lisza come back, so he goes after her and marries her.
Marion Clark, a manicurist, is unimpressed by the wealthy but dissipated men who frequent her shop, preferring city editor Dick Strong, who lives in her boardinghouse. Dick's sister Gladys, however, is intrigued by the wilder side of life in New York and allows one of the boarders to take her to a lively party.
Broker Henry Taylor is furious at the attention his wife Regina receives from Charles Bryant, an elderly bachelor. When he comes home one night and finds Regina in Bryant's arms, he orders him to leave. Bryant obliges, but he doesn't go away -- when the Taylors' daughter, Vivian, has a birthday, Bryant gives her a Shetland pony.