Jacques Mervel, also known as "L'Homme de la Jamaïque" makes use of his talents as a gun runner in Tangiers, Morocco. After triumphing over a rival gang, he decides to quit the job and to start a new life with Vicky, a pretty young nurse. In Paris, a doctor lets him know that he is affected by leprosy. In desperation, Jacques runs away from Vicky to spare her. When she realizes the reason why Jacques has disappeared from her life, she joins him with a view to helping him fight the disease.
A man who lost everything in the war now smuggles contraband into and out of Spain, but the law's closing in.
Princess Jones, the niece of a country store keeper, dreams of being a wealthy, glamorous lady. While at an luxurious nearby resort she meets the wealthy Arthur Forbes, who falls in love with her and buys her an expensive coat. This leads her to be mistaken by the other guests as a Balkan princess and attracts the eye of a gang of kidnappers.
To help his dying father, assistant bank cashier Arthur Mansfield enters a fake sum in the bank's account book, but before carrying out the pilferage, he confesses to cashier Slayton, his superior. Slayton, who needs money to pay for his unsuccessful speculations, goes at night to take the money that Mansfield planned to embezzle, so that Mansfield will take the blame.
A young girl is reared on a desert island by natives and led to believe that she is a goddess. One day an outsider comes to the island, and persuades her to accompany him to preach about the kindness and love she has experienced. She agrees, but she's soon confronted by the problems and travails of the "outside" world.
To start a little in advance of our story, Lord Rintoul, of the English nobility, finds a little Gypsy girl three years old, who had been deserted by her parents. Fifteen years later, Gavin Dishart, the Little Minister, receives an appointment, his first, at Thrums, Scotland. This was made possible through the self-sacrifices of his widowed mother, to educate him for the ministry. The community of Thrums is made up of weavers, who work hard, have little and accomplish much. They are ultra-religious and look upon their pastor with such reverence that he is a little lower than the angels. While naturally intelligent, they are grounded in dogma and intolerance. Just after the Little Minister takes charge of the "Auld Licht Kirk" and the Manse, the weavers resent a reduction, by the manufacturers, in their pay and a strike is declared.