Laura Sears

To decide a wager, two young millionaires decide to take a vagrant from a lodging house and give him the name and wealth of one of the pair, to see what he will do. By mistake they seize upon a young newspaper reporter down on his luck. The reporter enters into the spirit of the idea and wins the girl of his love and gets a better job on his old paper.

Weak-willed Roy Hanford, driven from his father's house by the coldness of his stone-hearted wife and the sanctimonious attitude of his father, the deacon, flees to the city.

Eastern capitalists hire a stranger to head out to Arizona to investigate property near the Bar C Ranch, which contains gold. The Bar C is run by Buck Moran, and he and his cowboys are a lawless bunch. They don't know about the gold, but Dave Moore does, and so does his daughter Bobbie, whom he dresses up like a boy. Her true gender is eventually sussed out by the stranger.

"Tough Luck" Baxter, returning from a prospecting trip, meets Happy Jack Clarke, a former citizen of Baxter City, a boom town which became a ghost town when the gold petered out. A game of cards decides that Clarke will go back to Baxter City with "Tough Luck" in search of ore. Meanwhile, the Firefly, a New York music hall entertainer out of a job, is ordered by her parasitic husband Bert Wilcox to perform at the dance hall in Baxter City. Upon her arrival, she finds the town deserted and strikes out on the open trail.

Brent Brewster, formerly a Yale athlete known for his pole vaulting prowess, is unsuccessful in business. When his wealthy relatives send him out to fend for himself, Brent joins a detective agency. After Craig Lansing, a family friend, hires Brent to investigate the numerous jewel thefts in Poughkeepsie, Brent works undercover at Lansing's house party and recognizes Captain Drake, an English crook. Although Brent temporarily forgets detective work when he meets Ann, the beautiful sister of Lansing's wife Ruth, Ann's remark that $40,000 a year would be enough for her to live on brings Brent back to the job.

A 1917 film directed by Irvin Willat.