Jack Hardin has been accepted by Harriet and has returned home where he is found at his father’s safe in a compromising position. He protests his innocence, but the only one who believes him is his mother. He leaves home and his brother, Norman, sees his suit with Harriet successful. Five years later Jack returns. Time has softened the old man’s spirit, and the mother welcomes her boy. Norman has been paying assiduous court to Harriet, and the same night that Jack returns she agrees to marry Norman if she should not hear from Jack within the year. When Norman meets his brother at the house he feels that his chances with Harriet are slim. Jack, reinstated, goes to work in the firm of which his father is a partner. Mr. Hardin has given Jasper Wade a note to cover payment for the latter’s share of the business, which he is buying for his son, Norman. Hardin is in difficulties, and Wade purposely mismanages the business so that the profits will decrease. Hardin, he plans, unable to meet the note, the business will become Wades’s sole property. Jack overhears the conversation between his parents. He learns the cause of the trouble. Later, after his father and Norman have left, Jack seeks Wade, and tells him that he has come to redeem his father’s note. Wade is plainly disappointed, but he has to acquiesce. In his own room, Jack packs up and leaves a note to his mother, explaining he has done everything for her sake. The bank refuses to honor the check. At the same time on a train far away Jack slowly destroys the note that releases his father and thinks of the worthless check that makes him a fugitive. Hardin is not worried any more; he can pay his debt as he wishes. He breathes a sigh of relief, and then sees a glimmer of light – perhaps the black sheep was not so black after all. - Reel Life, May 20, 1916