Set during the American Civil War, Keenan stars as a Virginia colonel and Charles Ray as his weak-willed son. The son is forced, at gunpoint, by his father to enlist in the Confederate army. He is terrified by the war and deserts during a battle. The film focuses on the son's struggle to overcome his cowardice.
Mr. Burns, a student of Theosophy, has a dream in the hammock. He sees himself, his wife and her admirer, in a previous existence.
Jules Ingram ( William Desmond ), the sole survivor of an old Puritan family, seeks solace and forgetfulness in drink. Unable to pay his debts, Jules is driven from his house when banker Rufus Moore ( Robert McKim ) forecloses on the mortgage. Offered shelter by Mercy Reed ( Margery Wilson ), a woman who in her youth naively sinned and has remained rejected by the community ever since, Jules begins to reform. Climbing his way back to respectability, Jules attends church with Mercy, causing a storm of protest. Moore's wife Agnes urges the mob to violence, and as they attempt to tar and feather Jules and Mercy, Mercy delivers an eloquent speech condemning Moore as her betrayer. The mob then takes Moore as their victim, leaving Jules and Mercy in peace.
When Reverend Robert Henley and his sister Faith arrive in the town of Hell's Hinges, saloon owner Silk Miller and his cohorts sense danger to their evil ways. They hire gunman Blaze Tracy to run the minister out of town. But Blaze finds something in Faith Henley that turns him around, and soon Silk Miller and his compadres have Blaze to deal with.
Jim and Molly are set to get married when Molly finds out about her fiancé's criminal past. Bill Carey weasels his way into Molly's heart in the interim, eager to relieve her of her savings.
Dr. Dudley Duprez is a well-known Louisiana physician. His beautiful but wayward niece, Rose Duprez, is abducted by Paul Crenshaw, a friend of the doctor, and to prevent her shame from becoming known, Rose kills herself. Dr. Duprez learns her secret and determines to make Crenshaw expiate his crime. While traveling on a Mississippi River steamer, the doctor wins Mercedes, a beautiful slave, at cards. He takes her home and, passing her off as a distant relative, arranges it so that Crenshaw falls in love with the girl.
Luke McVane (William S. Hart) shoots a card-cheat in self-defense and has to make a run for it before the town lynch him.
When Ashley Hampdon becomes the target of a scheme to ruin him by his daughter's suitor, Hampdon sends for his old friend Bob White. Bob discovers that the suitor, Gregg Lewiston, cannot hope to win Lina Hampdon while her father's wealth remains intact. Lewiston hopes that if her family becomes destitute, she will turn to him. But Bob White is there to upset the scheme.
A "scientific detective" story about the attempted murder of a wealthy New Yorker in his mountain lodge is framed with a satire of Hollywood as the writer of the story comically tries to get the script read and accepted by a studio.
A Native American warrior travels to a faraway tribe to find and defend a woman that haunts his dreams.
Steve Denton, rich from years of prospecting, is fleeced by the citizens of Yellow Ridge. In his rage, he kidnaps the woman most responsible and makes her his slave in a desert hideaway.
One of the earliest westerns directed by William S. Hart. In this film Sferiff Hale (Hart) lets a villain escape to pay his 'debt' to him, at the risk of designation.
In Belgium, at the outbreak of the war, Russian agent Olga Raminoff shoots at a German general when the enemy enters town. Ray Bourke, an American traveler, gives her the protection of his name, but nevertheless both are sentenced to death. They are rescued by an allied rescue plane and later, bound for home, Ray meets an old college friend, Curt Schreiber, who is in the service of the German government. Schreiber has important papers to be delivered to Washington and, knowing that he will be searched on board ship, gives them to Ray. Olga beseeches Ray to give the papers up for her sake, but his word to Schreiber is sacred. Nearing America, Ray tells her that he will make an effort to return the papers if she will marry him.
Sioux leader Chief Gray Otter sends his son Tiah to the white man's school so that he can become a great leader. The son returns home drunk, disappointing his father. Things get worse when the son joins a group of renegades and robs a payroll wagon. The father, observing the clash from a distance, takes a side.
The U.S. Army and the Indians sign a peace treaty. However, a group of surveyors trespass on the Indians' land and violate the treaty. The army refuses to listen to the Indians' complaints, and the surveyors are killed by the Indians. A vicious Indian war ensues, culminating in an Indian attack on an army fort.
A small town marshal’s secret past as an outlaw comes back to haunt him when an old associate shows up and threatens to expose his former dark deeds.
A Spanish boy is shipwrecked and cast ashore in Mexico in the sixteenth century. He is raised as a god by the Tehuan tribe, who have never before seen a white man, and is named Chiapa. Then at manhood he rules the Tehuans. Chiapa loves the priestess Tecolote but she is kidnapped by the Aztec warrior Mexitli, so he follows in the hopes of rescuing her.
Jim Morrison is an English army officer who comes from a very old and prominent family. He marries the ravishingly beautiful but unscrupulous Cleo, who has no qualms about using her sexual allure to get the luxuries her husband can't provide. When Jim is sent off to war, Cleo embarks on a series of affairs, one of which results in her becoming the love slave of a German spy, the very spy that her husband has been assigned to track down.
Through the efforts of the Rev. John Drummond, who comes to a small western mining town with his little boy, all the saloons are closed. Jim Howe and his daughter, Nell, being unable to carry on a liquor business in the town, move to the mountains, where he runs an illicit still and continues to supply whiskey to the Indians. The sheriff gets on his trail and he is soon placed in the custody of the law. Nell, determining to avenge herself for the capture of her father, fires n shot into a party of hostile Indians, secreting herself in a bush as she does so. The Indians, seeing the soldiers coming, and thinking that they fired the shot, rush at them, but are defeated. This plan of revenge having failed, she makes her way to the minister's home, but is prevented from doing any harm to him by the maternal instinct which rises in her when she sees his little boy praying for his mother in heaven.
Antone Tojetti and his pretty daughter, Maria, are street musicians in Venice. John Strom, an American millionaire, makes love to Maria, and finally persuades her to leave for America with him. Her father sees them just as they are leaving, but she will not return to him. Two years later, Maria, abandoned by John, returns to her father, who has now become a guide in the mountains. She dies and Antone vows vengeance. Some time after this, John Strom, now married, is touring Europe and he and his party seek a guide to visit Vesuvius. Antone takes the position. John not recognizing in him the father of Maria.
