Little Billy, the bootblack, finding luck against him, decides to move to some other town. To do this he must walk, as he hasn’t the wherewithal for a railroad ticket. While trudging through the country, he falls into the hands of a couple of sinister-looking tramps, and they at once, by threats, force him to beg for them. A day or so later, the tramps hold up an old man, and while procuring his money throw him down with such force as to unintentionally kill him. Panic-stricken at their awful deed, they feel that the boy’s knowledge of the affair will prove disastrous for them, and so they decide to get rid of him. Through the sagacity of a dog the boy is saved and the tramps are captured.

Set in a tenement boarding house, a lonely confirmed bachelor occupies a room across the hall from a dour spinster. Children run amok in the hallways playing pranks. Believing the bachelor perpetrated one particular prank, the spinster woman enters his room to confront him. She is followed by a neighbor child. Meanwhile, the other children have stolen a scarlet fever quarantine sign and posted it on the bachelor's door. The police, unaware that the quarentine sign is a prank, enforce the confinement. But aided by the sweet disposition of the toddler quarantined with them, the icy relations between spinster and bachelor begin to thaw, . . .