The scene opens in a well-equipped office, where a young girl is engaged in putting the finishing touches to a letter, which the next moment is handed to the “Blackmailer,” who nods a gratified approval. The letter is a demand for $2,500 under threat of exposure to the world, of some “early indiscretion.” The picture momentarily displays a telegram sent to detective headquarters, and then is shown the fireside where husband and wife are conning the fatal letter. The husband, unyielding and unbending, sends the wife from home, and then sets about to effect the capture of the blackmailer. The money demanded is deposited at the root of a tree in a big forest, and a trio of detectives conceal themselves nearby. Too clever to come himself, the real blackmailer sends an accomplice, and just as the latter is making off with the bundles of money, he is pounced upon by the officers of the law. This is one of the most dramatic situations of the whole picture. With a strength born of sheer desperateness, the cornered man handles his would-be captors like so many wisps of straw. There follows a long chase through the forest, terminating in a running pistol duel in which one of the pursuers is killed, a second is severely wounded, while the third officer, after a desperate struggle, puts the shackles on his man and marches him off to prison. The next denouement develops a court scene showing the trial of the murderer and blackmailer, and this quickly shifts to a broken woman, the wife, far from home, who is seen eagerly scanning the papers in an effort to know something of the fate of her traducers. In the next scene the real heart of the story is revealed. Searched for high and low by the daughter, the mother is finally found and led to her old home. The husband is at first reluctant to forgive, but the little child joins their hands, the old love wells strong in the heart of both; forgiveness, and a happy curtain.