The High Grader (1914)

• 66%
• 1914
• Drama
• William MacLeod Raine
• Wallace Reid
• Florence Crawford
• Charles Courtwright

While out hunting Wheeler and his daughter rescue a prospector, Tom Andrews, from a ledge where he has fallen. They take the wounded man home and nurse him back to health. Wheeler, needing a partner, offers him an interest in his project and soon after they strike a rich vein. Wheeler is caught by a cave-in and mortally wounded. He confides his daughter to the care of his partner, Andrews, before he dies. Angry because she will not marry him. Andrews undertakes to freeze Leota out from the mine by making returns showing that the property no longer pays. By chance Leota is rescued from drowning by a young down-at-heels mining engineer named Dick Raleigh, She confides in him. He has found work at the mine and knows from the character of the ore that Andrews is putting up a job on her. In order to prove this, he becomes a highgrader (steals highgrade ore from the mine), intending to have it assayed when he gets a sackful. A mine detective suspects Raleigh of highgrading and shadows him. Raleigh sees that he is concerned. With the help of an Oriental laundryman when he has befriended Raleigh gets the ore from his room wrapped up as laundry, and then screws his empty trunk to the floor so that Andrew's spy may think it is still heavy with highgrade ore. Having safely disposed of the ore, Raleigh returns to his room and is arrested, but an examination shows that the trunk contains no ore. The assayer finds the samples submitted to him run high, whereupon Leota, as a majority stockholder, fires Andrews and makes Raleigh superintendent. To revenge himself Andrews hires two thugs to beat up Raleigh, but they make a mistake and do him up instead. Raleigh and Leota find that to each other they must look for their happiness and the play ends with a love scene.