On the eve of her elopement with Henry Traquair, Margaret Fielding is accidentally discovered in Traquair's apartments by his friends, Captain Richard Haynes and Walter Maxwell.
Perfect angel Willie declines to accompany his doting wife Dolly to a mask ball, but instead of a quiet evening at home among his books, Willie spends the night at an underground casino, and instead of being chaperoned at the party, Dolly is out flirting with another man.
This film is a very loose film adaptation of the 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo and presumed lost: The wealthy girl Esmeralda is kidnapped by gypsies at birth and becomes, as one might assume, the darling of Paris.
Loutish Teddy Brant feeling trapped by his marriage and family commitments to the sweet Rose and their infant daughter Helen fakes his suicide and embarks on a dissolute life.
When Mary and Fannie Graham, daughters of a good mother but a father with criminal instincts, are left motherless, Mary flees from her unhappy surroundings while Fannie, inheriting her father's disposition, remains and is raised as a thief.
Truthful Tulliver, a Westerner and a journeying newspaperman, followed by Silver Lode Thompson, printer and compositor, arrives in Glory Hole to start a newspaper.