Rudolph Burmeister, an old musician in straightened circumstances, is shown composing at a piano. Suddenly his face lights up, as the inspired melody fills the air. He repeats it and then writes it on music paper. In the room above the old musician, lives Richard Davidge, a keen-eared young man, who is also poor, but whose face is filled with the look of lurking evil. He listens with quickening interest to the music of the old master. The new melody fascinates him and he writes it down as he bears it. Then he rushes out with it. The old musician calls his daughter and she listens to the air, and is at once thrilled with the haunting beauty of the melody. The scene shifts to the office of Henry Richard, a popular publisher, when Richard Davidge appears with his freshly written manuscript. He knows the value of his discovery and plays it in a fashion that wins the publisher, and he gets it on a royalty basis, with $500 in advance. Time passes. The old musician has been seriously ill, but now a change has come and he is convalescent. Davidge has deserted his shabby quarters and is now rolling in luxury as a result of his profits on the stolen “His Dream of Youth.” He is the guest of honor at a “turf-hunters” home on the Riverside Drive. Herr Burmeister himself now goes to the music publisher and proceeds to play his composition. He is informed that it is “The Dream of Youth,” already their best seller. He is humiliated and amazed, and returns home crest-fallen. His daughter takes to the matter more seriously. She visits the publisher and recognizes the picture on the title page as that of the man who lived upstairs and moved away so suddenly, immediately after her father composed the piece. Then it transpires that the impudent musical impostor has been convicted of grand larceny in London, and is a fugitive from justice, “wanted at Scotland Yard.” Davidge is exposed at a swell reception in his honor, and is taken away by the police; and good old Burmeister gets the reward he deserved for giving the world a new glory in melody.