The Expiation

Impersonating Little Eva in a third-rate travelling production of Uncle Tom's Cabin fails to earn Nora enough for a square daily meal, and to make thing worse, her stage career comes to a sudden end when the sheriff arrives with a writ of seizure. Nora hops a passing freight but is frightened by a tramp, jumps off, and literally rolls into the town of Wattelville. After being arrested as a suspicious character, Nora is adopted by the kindly Ma Forbes, whose son James works in the local bank. "Pug" Hennessy and "Soup" McCool, two crooks, inveigle the scrupulously honest James into a poker game and, as a result, he is forced to steal $300 from the bank to cover his losses. Impersonating expert safe-cracker Velvet Mary, Nora helps the crooks to break into the bank, but upon opening the safe, she sounds the alarm, and the crooks are arrested. Having learned his lesson, James proposes to Nora, who never again is forced to go hungry.

A rich man's enemies cause him to lose his money, his best friend (his dog), as he goes to jail. Once free he spends all his time hunting for his lost dog.

Annette and Bunny each purchase one of a pair of antique vases, then meet and argue over who should own the matching set. After exchanging the vases in a gesture of goodwill, they end up with the same single vase they started with. Ultimately, they decide to get married and keep the complete pair together as a symbol of their union.

Jimmie Dexter is on his way to college when his mother discovers that her stocks have stopped paying dividends. Jean Hilton, who has always loved Jimmie, offers to secretly stake him using her own inheritance. So Jimmie goes off to college, none the wiser, and gets tangled up with vampy cabaret singer Diana Parish.

A countess boasts that she can easily pull off a jewelery robbery. A professional jewel thief beats her to the punch, but then finds that his newfound loot has been stolen by a pretty young woman.

Extremely condensed version of the Mark Twain story of a royal heir and his poor doppelganger trading places.

Virginia Dean enjoys a yachting trip with her father. She falls in love with the captain of the boat, John Reynolds. A gang of criminals has stowed away on board and they take over the yacht and set her father and the crew adrift in a small boat. However, they keep John and Virginia on board. When the yacht catches fire, they all abandon ship and take refuge on a nearby tropical island. Blackie Slade, the leader of the villains, rouses the natives to attack the others

Mary and John Rand marry right after graduating law school, but John chooses to join the ministry. After the birth of their daughter, Henrietta, and unhappy in that life, Mary persuades John to consent to a divorce. She resumes practicing law and with the help of Bruce Corbin is eventually elected Attorney General, becoming romantically involved with him as well. Meanwhile, Henrietta grows up neglected and enters a free life of jazz and drinking. She catches Corbin’s eye and he falls for her. What follows is a tale of murder, revenge and redemption.

A wife offers to support her artist husband by teaching piano. She can't find work at the conservatory, and ends up working in a laundry, without telling him the truth. When he discovers her lie, he is determined to leave her, until she is injured and he understands the sacrifice she made for him.

The pretty daughter of a French-Canadian backwoodsman incites the love of a trapper who is so smitten with the beauty of this wood nymph that he purchases her into marriage from her father. The transaction meets with repugnance from the girl. She was entirely contented with conditions, a child of nature, carefree. However, she finds her pleading of no avail, and so pretends to accept the situation. The trapper and Canadian go into the cabin to seal the bargain with a drink, and while inside the girl closes and fastens the door on them and makes her way through the woods to escape.

Hester Prynne has left Holland in advance of her husband, Roger, to join the colonists in Salem, Maxx. Roger follows her to the new world but upon landing in New England is captured by Indians and Hester waits for him in vain.

Olive Muir, a haughty society girl, objects when Alice Prentice, a girl of lower station, comes to visit her family. After Alice's drunken father comes to visit the Muir home, Olive learns to her horror that she is adopted and that Prentice is her real father.