- Oliver Bailey, a substitute for star player Foster Calhoun on the Newbridge College football team, owes a lot of money to gamblers, and in order to repay it he decides to throw an important game. He tricks Calhoun into drinking too much and when Calhoun is unable to play, Bailey is sent in his place. He deliberately throws the game, but the college holds Calhoun responsible for the loss and expels him. Having lost his reputation, his girlfriend and becoming a pariah in town, he turns into a hopeless alcoholic. Traveling west, he hooks up with a dance-hall girl who tricks him into marrying her. However, he soon receives some good news regarding his old school, but it may be too late for him to take advantage of it.—frankfob2@yahoo.com
- The story opens in Newbridge College at the height of the football season. Foster Calhoun is the star member of the team. He is an orphan, sent to college by his rich uncle, Leroy Calhoun. Foster and Oliver Bailey are in love with Margaret Cummings. Bailey is also a substitute for Foster's place on the team, which further complicates matters. Brought face to face with disgrace for his gambling debts, Bailey determines to resort to drastic measures to turn the assured victory of his own college to defeat. Thus he hopes to win money to clear himself from debt. Overhearing Foster's uncle remark that the young hero possessed an inherited craving for drink of which he, himself, was not conscious. Bailey determines to use this as a means to secure his end. He sees to it that the trainer accidentally uses alcohol in rubbing down Foster's face. To further his cowardly deed, Bailey leaves a bottle of alcohol in Foster's room. Naturally, with his taste for liquor aroused, Foster's instinctive craving gets the better of him and he hurriedly drains the bottle. At the big game, Foster, on whom the victory rested, is found wanting. Bailey is substituted for the star, and as he has planned, loses the game for Newbridge. Foster is expelled for becoming intoxicated on the eve of battle, and his engagement to Margaret is called off. The remainder of the story is set in the west, where the shorn hero goes with one Crooky, a crippled newsboy, whom he finds in apparently as friendless a condition as he himself is in.Crooky is a keen, philosophic little soul. There is Roby, an unscrupulous girl of the dance halls, who becomes infatuated with Foster because of his sheer brutal strength. She weaves her soft mesh about his liquor-fagged mind, and inveigles him into marrying her. One day a letter comes which seems to frighten the brazen dance hall wench. She hides her excitement from Foster, but not from Crooky, who finds it and holds it as evidence against her. Soon after a stranger comes to the cabin where Roby and Foster and the crippled boy live. Foster comes back one day and finds his wife and the stranger drinking. He engages in combat with the man. During the struggle the lamp is overturned and Foster is left unconscious in the burning cabin. He is rescued by Crooky, who believes that Roby and her lover have also been suffocated. Foster and Crooky flee to the mountains. There commences a terrific struggle in the older man's soul against the craving. Crooky finds a newspaper which tells of Leroy Calhoun's death, and further recounts the fact that the sole and only heir, Foster Calhoun, cannot be found. With almost uncanny wisdom, the lad writes the attorneys of Foster's whereabouts, and awaits an answer while he helps down his friend's thirst for rum. At length the attorneys write Foster of his good fortune, and enclose a letter from his uncle, telling the young man that he, himself, was to blame, because he had never told him of his inherited taste for liquor. The latter also holds out hope of Margaret relenting, and half promises that she will marry him if he returns. Even at this auspicious moment The Craving does not end. There is still struggle upon struggle for the worthy Foster and Crooky, his slave. Not yet trusting himself, the young man remains in the clear air of the mountains until he feels that he has overcome his desire. When he returns, he returns to find that Bailey, who, too, has been in the west, has brought back Roby, not dead as Foster has thought, as a living testimony to the fact that Foster has tried to deceive Margaret. Crooky, however, saves the day. He discloses a bit of conversation he had overheard between Bailey and the gamblers in a saloon, which clears Foster of any guilt on the day of the football victory years ago, and produces the letter which proves that Roby was married before she inveigled Foster into becoming, as he believed, her legal husband.—Moving Picture World synopsis
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