Peggy Hyland

Polly Biggs helps care for her younger brother and sisters, while her widowed mother works hard as a seamstress to earn a living. Mayor Hoadley, Mrs. Biggs' brother, a crooked politician, calls to sympathize with her on the death of her husband, and Polly takes a dislike to him.

Although Margaret "Peg" Martyn of the Carolina territory loves Terry, a poor poet, her father, Sir Wyndham Martyn, wishes her to marry the ancient Arthur Elliott. At the engagement party, Peg's wish that "the pirates might get her" comes true when Captain Bones and his men ransack Martyn's estate and carry Peg off to their ship.

When the nation of Ruthania declares war on the United States, an army of enemy soldiers invades the U.S. and captures New York. But the American forces have prepared adequately for such an event, and hidden booby traps, trick fortifications, and remote-controlled bombs...

Mr. Curtis returns to his Alma mater and regales students with stories about the Civil War, which ended fifty years before. He tells them about his college friends, Dick Randolph and Watkins, who were at first rivals for Marian - who far preferred Dick - and then rivals on the battlefield.

Signa Herrick, a stenographer whose skills leave much to be desired, finds out that her boss is keeping her on only because he's a friend of her recently deceased father. Embarrassed, she leaves her small Wisconsin town for New York to live with her married sister, Janet. She quickly proceeds to get mixed up with jewel thieves, detectives, an alcoholic millionaire and his greedy, scheming relatives.

Crump's Colossal Combined Carnival Show barely survives financially by hiring thieves and pickpockets to rob customers. One day, clubman Jack Hamilton buys the circus when his car breaks down on his way to meet a deadline to avoid bankruptcy and he needs the circus tractor to haul his auto out of a ditch. Hamilton leads the circus to financial success and falls in love with Gypsy, the ticket-taker. To convince Jack to marry Gypsy, her supposed mother, fortune-teller Carlotta, says that she was kidnapped as a baby and shows Jack a photo in which he recognizes Gypsy's mother as the wife of Andrew Pomeroy, the financier who ruined him.

Cyrus Baird is trying to force his daughter to marry Ethelbert Granger, wealthy but effeminate. She meets and falls in love with James Morton, nephew of Baird's pet enemy. Ethelbert takes the Bairds to cruise in the houseboat of Max Rupholdt, who has a mine layer concealed in the innocent looking craft. Morton, suspected of disloyalty, penetrates Max's secret and rescues the girl just before the fleeing spy meets extermination through one of his own mines.

A feud in the Adirondack Mountains develops when Randolph Shaw will not give up a shack and its acreage adjoining the estate of Lord Cecil Bazelhurst, whose wife, the former Evelyn Banks of Jersey City, married him for his title and now wants to get rid of Randolph's ugly shack. When Randolph meets Cecil's sister Penelope, a romance begins which is furthered after one of the Bazelhurst servants shoots Randolph in the arm for trespassing and Penelope, who earlier had looked upon the feud as a joke, runs away to Randolph's house and accepts his engagement proposal. Cecil and his men pursue Penelope, but are frightened away by Randolph's men and are forced to spend a miserable stormy night in the woods. The next day everyone becomes reconciled when Lady Evelyn realizes that the desired property will now be in the family, and Randolph offers Cecil and his men dry, if ill-fitting, garments to wear.

Though the Turk has 15 wives, he yearns to make our heroine his 16th.

Letty, a minister's daughter, rejects her devoted admirer George for the deceptive Captain Fanshawe. After Fanshawe ruins her reputation by tricking her into an overnight city trip, her father resigns in shame. Following a scarlet fever epidemic, the characters find redemption, and George ultimately marries Letty.

Informed by her husband Ed that they will not be honeymooning at Niagara Falls as promised, but rather at the County Fair, newlywed Peggy decides it is time to assert her independence and steals away to the falls alone, leaving her bewildered husband to follow. After the honeymoon, Ed takes his bride to the home that had been his mother's, and Peggy redecorates the entire house in her husband's absence. Gradually, Ed learns to submit to his wife's modern attitudes until he discovers that her continual visits to the city have not been to the dentist's, as she had said, but to the studio of portrait painter Perry Pipp. Ed angrily confronts Peggy with her deception, forcing her to return home to her parent's house. Later, when Ed learns that Peggy has been posing for a portrait as a birthday surprise, he begs his wife's forgiveness, which she bestows, along with the information that a baby is on it's way.

While traveling to meet her sweetheart, Richard Carr, in the capital of the Grand Duchy of Bonaluria, Peggy Dare's train compartment door is thrust open and a little boy is thrown at her feet. Peggy is so taken with the child, who tells her that his name is Manouche, that she looks after him. She foils an attempt to kill Manouche, before arriving in Bonaluria where she learns from Richard that the boy is really the Grand Duke.

A victim of hypnotism begins to have compulsions to steal.