Martha. Elliot, a young music student, meets and falls in love with Lucien Grey, who is just entering upon a promising career as a physician. After a brief interval of happiness, Grey deserts the girl. Martha soon afterwards finds herself forced to provide a living for two. She is deeply embittered against the perfidious father, and this bitterness she communicates to her son. The boy reaches manhood, and proceeds to carve out for himself a career in the law. Martha, by this time a middle-aged and chronic invalid, lives only for her brilliant and successful son. Her joy in him is gloriously crowned when he is elected to the office of District Attorney. The sensation of many weeks comes to a finish one morning when the newspapers print in full page headlines the story of the arrest, on a criminal charge of the eminent and wealthy surgeon, Lucien Grey. Elliot, who knows the man to be his delinquent parent, inflamed as he is with hatred against the man whom he holds responsible for his mother’s years of disgrace, hardship and want, and for the resulting illness which has blighted her later life, resolves to prosecute the case in person. His passionate hatred seems to inspire him, so that he carries out his intention with such relentless skill and astuteness, that although the evidence is flimsy. Grey is soon lodged in the death cell awaiting execution. The harrowing days, during which the case is in progress, so tell upon Martha Elliot’s condition that her malady is seriously aggravated. At last she succumbs to the strain. A consultation of experts declares that the woman’s one chance for life lies in a piece of surgery which none of them has the skill to attempt. Lucien Grey, who is awaiting the law’s extreme penalty in the state prison, is the only man who can perform it. When Elliot discovers the fact, he goes secretly to the prison and, relying on his close resemblance to his father to shield them from detection, he releases the latter and sends him to the dying woman’s bedside. He himself takes the prisoner’s place in the cell. Grey arrives in time to save Martha Elliot’s life. But just as he is in the middle of his delicate task the lights go out. There is no moment to be lost. The hour is approaching when the warden will open the cell door and lead the occupant forth to death. Grey gropes his way to the switchboard in the hallway, but can do nothing. In despair, he prays. Instantly his hands find out the right switch in the darkness. He finishes his work and rushes back to the prison. But Elliot’s fiancée, Alice Lee, fearing the truth, namely, that the young lawyer’s successful prosecution was actuated by a sense of legal justice than by personal animosity, has already secured a reprieve for the prisoner from the Governor. Grey finds his cell empty and himself a free man.