William T. Hayes

In a mock fraternity initiation, a group of Yale students haze Paul Browning for tattling. When he learns that the leader of the group, oarsman Buck Simmons, is also winning the favor of Aida Courtlandt, the dean's niece, the jealous Browning and gambler Burton Hampdon, to whom Browning owes money, attempt to disgrace Buck so he will not be allowed to participate in the upcoming Yale-Harvard race. After they fail to lure Buck to bed with a girl, Browning takes Aida to a roadhouse so that Buck will have to break training rules to go there. When the coach, suspicious about the roadhouse incident, finds a letter planted on Buck about a deal for him to throw the race, he suspends Buck, but with Aida's influence, the dean straightens matters out. After Yale wins a close race, Browning shoots at Buck, who then trounces him. Proclaimed captain of the next year's team, Buck becomes engaged to Aida.

After her husband's death in the West, Mrs. Lehr, a young widow who grew up in Cuttleback, decides to return there with her two daughters, Jane and Katherine, and make her home on the old family estate which had been looked after in her absence by Job Jenkins, a caretaker who had been in the Lehr family's employ since boyhood, and by now he has been the estate's sole occupant for so many years that he regards it as part of his life, and is disturbed when his mistress returns with her children.

Ruth Hoagland grows up on the Florida Keys with no companion other than her father, a half-witted fisherman who spends most of his time hunting for buried treasure. Vacationing yachtsman Bob Winthrop and Ruth fall in love, but Winthrop returns to New York, and after a year, has forgotten Ruth. After finding two chests in a cave, Ruth locates her father unconscious from a fall. She goes to the mainland for help, but returns with the Reverend Josiah Arbuthnot and Dr. William Strong, to find her father dead. Strong, out of kindness, offers to marry her, but Ruth declines, sure that Winthrop will return.

Ham is interested in a girl named Marie and wants to impress her. First he buys a car and then he takes her out to a swanky nightclub. During the course of this disastrous date Ham realizes that Marie isn't the nice girl he thought she was: she only went out with him to make her real boyfriend jealous. The boyfriend is a dancer at the club, and when she sees him kissing his dance partner she becomes enraged and smashes up the place, while poor Ham is stuck with the bill.

Dan Williams leaves his small hometown in disgrace, and travels to New York City to try his luck on Broadway. He gets a small part in a Broadway show, but his press agent releases a story that he has a big part and is making $3,000 a week. Dan's father, a banker who is facing a run on his bank, hears about Dan's sudden "fortune" and asks him for financial help. Complications ensue.

Two confidence men pose as investors to fleece the denizens of a small town. They build a carpet-tack factory with the funds, but some stockholders are suspicious. Eventually, someone tries to take over the business by buying it from them. The film is presumed lost.

Letters from the late mother of orphaned sisters Jane and Katherine seem to indicate that their father is Capt. Bob Dutton. Under orders from his superior, Colonel Harding, to acknowledge the children or quit the service, Dutton accepts responsibility for them. Shocked by his presumably checkered past, Cecile Harding, Dutton's fiancée and the colonel's daughter, breaks their engagement. One evening Jane surprises Capt. Robert Duncan, Dutton's rival for Cecile, stealing Bob's papers.

Two families feud over possession of a valuable waterhole.