STORY

In the prologue of this picture, Fergus McClain is left a widower with a young son. His sorrow is bitter, but he directs all his love and attentions to the little boy. Follow a lapse of twenty years, the boy Donald has grown to manhood; he is the apple of his father’s eye. Returning from college, Donald is taken into his father’s office. Here he meets Jessie, his father’s stenographer and the daughter of an artisan. The boy is attracted to her and in time Jessie loves the handsome collegian “not wisely but too well.” As time goes on the boy wearies of his conquest; he returns from the girl to bury himself in club amusements. The girl is in a delicate condition; she confides in her father, who appeals to the boy’s father to have justice done his daughter. McClain, the elder, agrees with the girl’s father that the couple shall marry. Donald, returning from the club, is confronted with his guilt and appealed to. He refuses. His father is puzzled to know what to do. Then it is that the girl’s father decides to take the law into his own hands. He waits for the boy as he comes from the house; he shoves a gun against the boy’s side and commands him to go along. Once in the house with the girl, in her suffering before him, Donald’s feelings undergo a transformation. His fury is changed to sympathy, akin to love, and a desire for forgiveness. He gladly consents to the marriage and the girl’s father goes for the minister. In the meantime, the elder McClain has decided to attempt an atonement of his boy’s sin by marrying the girl himself. He comes to the house with this purpose in mind. He is surprised and glad to find his boy there, crushed and repentant. The wedding ceremony is performed with the boy folding the girl in his arms, his love revived. A lapse shows the happy family gathered on the lawn at the McClain’s home. The nurse advances and places the new arrival in the arms of the father. The baby is the “link that binds.”
Written by Moving Picture World