In comparative poverty, Miles Kenneth and his wife, Mary are happy with their young child, but face the situation bravely. Mary’s one distress is that she is unable to materially assist her husband. Who is in desperate need of additional money to compile a contract. A newspaper offers a prize of $1,000 for the best short story submitted, and Mary determines to compete, but, fearing her husband’s teasing, conceals her efforts. Mary is subjected to the unwelcome attention of a wealthy man. In her efforts to save her husband from pain and to prevent his taking some hasty vengeance, Mary allows herself to be placed in a false light and Miles’ jealousy is aroused. His suspicions are apparently confirmed when he finds a note that seems to fatally compromise his wife. In a mad fury be plans to kill his wife and then himself, but is diverted from this course by Myra, a girl of the city, who was a boyhood sweetheart, before she became what she now is. Myra, who has never ceased to love Miles, dreams that with the lover of her youth she may reform her wrecked life. Myra chances to meet with the child, who has wandered out into the streets, seeking her father to tell him to come home, that her mother is ill. With the child asleep in her arms, many emotions are awakened in Myra’s breast. She knows of the note that caused Miles to leave his home, and chance now places in her hands a copy of the prize story, just published, and which bears Mary’s name. In it Myra finds embodied the test of the fatal note, that which Miles found having been merely a sheet of Mary’s manuscript. Myra leads Miles, with the child, back to his home. In bitter remorse he appeals for forgiveness, which is granted him.