AllMovie

This Vitagraph feature was based on a then-popular novel, Hurrying Fate and Geraldine, by Florence Morse Kingsley. The grandfather of Geraldine Farleigh (Bessie Love) died owing General Fisk three thousand dollars (closer to 50 thousand dollars today). Now his heir, Bruce Cartwright (Wallace McDonald), wants to collect on the debt, and he hires the law firm of Bullers and Smith to look into the matter. Smith shows up and discovers that Geraldine is working as a schoolteacher to support her mother (Dorothea Wolbert), her aunt Adelaide (Anne Schaefer), and her little brother Nat (Gordon Griffith). Since it's obvious that there's no way for the debt to be repaid -- and because Geraldine is cool to his advances -- Smith decides to foreclose. When Geraldine writes Cartwright to ask for more time, Bullers shows up. He turns out to be a handsome young man, and he and Geraldine fall in love. He promises to hold off his client, much to Geraldine's relief. But then she's devastated when she hears that Bullers has eloped with the postmaster's daughter. Bullers shows back up in town asserting that he and the girl aren't married -- which is true because he's not really Bullers. He's Cartwright and had only pretended to be Bullers (the real Bullers did run off with the girl). It turns out that the debt was paid long ago, and when everything is explained to Geraldine, she is more than happy to be with Cartwright.