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At the circus, Piffles The Clown (Victor Moore) is seriously injured when he saves a crippled boy, Jackie (Jerold Ward), from a team of runaway horses. He convalesces at the home of Jackie's father, Judge Leroy (Ernest Joy), and meets his sister, Millicent (Florence Dagmar). Millicent's fiancée, Dick Ordway (Thomas Meighan) has been away prospecting, and word comes back that he has died in the desert. Millicent is pregnant with Dick's child and desperately tries to drown herself. She is saved by Piffles and tells him her story. Piffles, who loves her, offers to marry her in order to give the child a name. She agrees, and her father gets Piffles a job in a bank (without the clown suit, of course). Dick, however, isn't dead, and he has struck it rich. He goes to New York to buy up all the outstanding stock of his mine and discovers that one person won't sell. He goes to the man in Los Angeles, who turns out to be Piffles. Dick sees Millicent and finds out that her boy is his. At this point, Piffles graciously opts out. He returns to the circus, leaving Millicent a note explaining that any court will grant her a divorce on grounds of desertion, so she can be reunited with Dick.