Directing
J.H. Wareing, a New York City financier, is found murdered in his library after the robbery of several securities and a necklace. Suspicion points to the butler, Jason, to whom Wareing had shown the necklace the night before. Wareing's daughter, Florence, is also a suspect and therefore denied her father's estate.
A priest is trying to help a poor family when nearby the father is hit on the head by a criminal who then throws him off a bridge into the water below. The priest administers Last Rites then seeks to help the family and find the murderer.
This rarely seen, silent religious feature was produced by the Catholic Art Association. After making it big on Wall Street, John Harden boasts that he is the master of his own fate and believes in neither God nor the Devil. Needless to say, he pays mightily for this hubris. His family is reduced to poverty, his friends desert him, and things turn from bad to worse until his childhood faith is restored.
Lafayette Jordan (Davis), financier, plans to inundate Caribou Canyon and turn it into a reservoir, but the villagers will not sell him their land. Among the resentful villagers is Judson Forrest (Harlan), who wants to be an inventor. Mary Jordan (Bellamy), daughter of the financier, is hurt and spends a night at his home. Learning of his attitude toward her father, she poses as a domestic at the Jordan home. Later, in New York, Judson looks her up. He is trying to sell his invention and, to get funds, he mortgages his home. The village banker, in league with Jordan, sells the financier the mortgage, and a foreclosure threatens when Jordan's business agent Henry Mogridge (Miljan) double-crosses Judson. The youth thinks Mary working against him. Friends come to Judson's aid and he pays off the mortgage in the nick of time. He learns that Jordan knew nothing of the methods employed by his agent and that Mary loves him.
Mary Herder is the private secretary of the junior member of the New York contracting firm of Thompson and Collins. When she learns of a plot by the firm's foreman, a Bolshevist, to blow up a ship that Collins, who once rescued a worker from the foreman's violence and who is active against Bolshevism, is visiting, she and her older brother Charles thwart the conspirators' plans. During the war, Charles is rescued by Collins, while the Knights of Columbus, under the Rev. Francis Kelly, help American boys. After the war, Charles, a victim of shell-shock, recovers when he holds his baby. Mary's younger brother Frank, a Secret Service man posing as a Bolshevist, learns of their plan to overthrow the government. After they suspect Frank and kidnap Mary and others, Frank and Collins, with members of his regiment, rescue them in the nick of time.
