Jacques LeBarge lives with his wife and three-year-old daughter in a cabin. Their existence is happy, but Mary longs at times for the life of civilization. Wayne Milan, a former love, persuades her to leave her husband. Milan, however, refuses to take the child. Jacques returns to the cabin to find a note from Mary telling of her desertion. The child has seen the father approaching the cabin and playfully hides in the clothes closet. The father thinks Mary has taken the child with her. Jacques starts in pursuit. In the terrible anger over the discovery, he accidentally knocks over a chair in front of the fireplace of the cabin. A large coat is on the back of the chair, and soon after Jacques leaves the cabin this begins to burn, setting fire to the rest of the room. Jacques plunges into the forest on his mission of murder. He finds his wife before he goes far. She is caught in one of his own steel traps, and has been deserted by the coward Milan. She tells him the little girl has been left in the cabin. He looks, the cabin is in flames. Wife or child, which? He dashes away from the mother, back to the cabin and rescues the child as she lies on the closet floor, almost suffocated. Woodchoppers nearby rush to the cabin and receive Jacques and the child. Weakly, hysterically, Jacques runs to the spot where his wife is entrapped. With the aid of the men he releases her from the powerful steel jaws of the trap. The love she has displayed for the child has swept away Jacques’ anger for her. As the semi-conscious mother lies on the ground, calling feebly for her little one, Jacques forgives her.