Stephen Wright lives happily with his wife and baby daughter in New York. Partly in self-defense he kills a man. It is late at night when he returns home after committing the crime; his wife sleeps. His thoughts, however, are centered on his child. He steals into the bedroom, kisses his wife good-bye while she still sleeps and taking the baby in his arms, becomes a fugitive from justice. Next we find Wright in the mountains. His mind has weakened under the mental and physical strain. He seeks refuge in a cave. Fifteen years elapse. Wright has become old and gray. His daughter, Peg, has grown to beautiful young maidenhood, ignorant of the ways of society, knowing nothing of men, save her father, or woman’s dress. The wife lives alone in the east. About this time there comes to the mountains two detectives. Frank Noble and George Dean, commissioned to corner a band of moonshiners. Noble, searching the woods one day, sees what he believes is a wild animal; he raises his rifle to shoot when there arises from the grass a girl, dressed in a single skin. She disappears. Later he meets the girl again. Noble has purchased some store clothes and she puts them on. A light comedy love scene is interrupted by the old father who resents the appearance of a stranger. He tears the clothes from his daughter’s back and sends her to the cave. Noble has kept his romance from his coworker, Dean, but the latter learns of the affair. He is attracted by the girl and attempts to become unduly familiar with her. Noble interferes. Dean, suspecting that the girl and her father are moonshiners, enters the old man’s cave. Through an old scrap of paper he manages by referring to his date book to identify the old man as Wright, wanted for murder. He telegraphs the mother to come to the mountains to make certain his identification. The hermit finds that he is suspected; he retreats into the forest. Peg has learned of her father’s danger and she asks Noble to assist her in protecting him. Dean is determined to run the old man down. However, after a long search the old man is found dying. He lives only long enough to recognize his wife of years gone by. The mother is joyous at finding the child, and we have the rest of the story taken up with the happy marriage of Noble and Peg and the making of Peg into a “real” lady.