AllMovie

This famous old stage melodrama by Owen Davis is directed with a lot of spirit by Emmett J. Flynn and features a first rate cast. The overworked Robert Horton (Hobart Bosworth) convinces his friend Thomas Lipton (also played by Bosworth) to take his place for a year. Mrs. Horton (Dorothy Cummings) goes on vacation and her five-year-old daughter, Allyn (Betsy Ann Hisle), is left in Lipton's care. Horton comes back and, in an argument, tries to shoot Lipton. Lipton runs off, taking the child along with him, who he raises as Nellie. When she reaches young womanhood, Lipton falls ill and Nellie (now played by Claire Windsor) finds a job as a cloak model with the help of her friend, Polly Joy (Mae Busch). The shop where Nellie works is run by Walter Peck (Lew Cody), her mother's cousin. He will receive her fortune if her lost daughter is never found. When he discovers that Nellie is the missing girl, he kidnaps her and hires two thugs to tie her to the tracks of an elevated train. That same day, Horton dies, and Lipton urges Mrs. Horton to come for her long lost daughter. Coincidentally, she and Polly are travelling on the very train that is headed for Nellie's unconscious body. But Nellie is saved in the nick of time and is happily reunited with her mother. The surprise ending reveals that the whole film was actually a play being performed in a theater.