Plot

David Corson is a Quaker who is admired by members of his community for his spiritual ways. He has a crisis of faith when a snake-oil salesman named Dr. Paracelsus arrives in town with a young gypsy named Pepeeta. Thinking Pepeeta is Paracelsus' daughter, he becomes enamored of her and joins Paracelsus and Pepeeta as they travel about the countryside. He eventually discovers Pepeeta is Paracelsus' wife. David descends into drunkenness and gambling, and has a fight with Paracelsus, leaving him for dead. David then marries Pepeeta. Eventually, David meets Paracelsus, who was not killed, but was blinded in the fight. David, feeling remorse, allows Paracelsus to try to stab him, but Paracelsus drops dead in the attempt. David, with the help of Pepeeta, begins to regain his faith.—scsu1975

David Corson, Quaker, recluse and mystic, possessed of strong spiritual powers, walked with God and lived in an ethereal world of purity and sanctity. Guided by heavenly visions, with a power of logic and a beauty of voice and manner capable of swaying the emotions and passions of men, David was a mighty force in the quaint little Quaker community, in which he had spent all his life. Then the woman came, and Satan came also, and David heard the distant voices of the world calling his youth and its idle energies. In a moment of supreme test, he threw his wonderful faith aside, like a discarded garment, and entered the great world that beckoned to him. Dr. Paracelsus Aesculapius was a traveling quack, a fakir. In his wanderings he had found Pepeeta, a magnetic Spanish beauty, whom a band of gypsies had stolen as a baby. Paracelsus had bought Pepeeta from the gypsies, taking her with him as his wife; and Pepeeta was the woman who came into David's quiet life, changing all the course of its destiny. Passing through David's town, Dr. Paracelsus heard of the young Quaker's wonderful oratorical gifts, and at once realized his value in the selling of fake medicines. The crafty doctor lured David with fabulous promises of wealth and pleasure. But, meantime, Pepeeta and David had looked into each other's eyes, and so David consented to go with the doctor. Gradually, the love between David and Pepeeta exceeded human bounds, escaped beyond their control, and they followed the trail of the serpent. David urged her to flee with him, and the woman heeded and went with him to distant parts. The doctor followed them with furious vindictiveness, overtook them, and in a fierce struggle was left by David for dead. Tortured by the memory of having murdered the man who had befriended him, struggling against overwhelming elemental passions, David now cast all restraint aside and loosened the flood-gates of vice and depravity. He became a drunkard and a gambler, and descended into the dregs. The gentle Pepeeta, who had watched his degeneration with a breaking heart, could no longer tolerate him, and she left. In his desperate weakness, seeing the woman for whom he had risked his soul drift from him, and about to sink into the abyss of sin and shame, with the waters of oblivion ready to engulf him; it was then that he met the doctor, blind, old and weak, and living only for vengeance. The sight of the doctor was the turning point in David's downward career; it restored his normal balance; it offered a chance for expiation and restitution. He told the doctor who he was, and with a wild fury the blind Paracelsus, grasping a knife from beneath his tattered clothes, struck at David. In a scene of terrific repression, David waited for the impending blow, making no effort to escape or overcome his weak antagonist. The doctor's thrust missed and he fell to the floor, where a moment later he died. David's escape from the pursuing Nemesis nerved him to a final and sublime rally, and, guided by the Divine light, he found the harbor of peace, a storm-racked soul, but with the victorious spirit in command. He sought Pepeeta, and, purified and redeemed, he found in the woman he sought to destroy a strong spiritual ally and an inspiring factor in his final regeneration.—Moving Picture World synopsis