The motherless son of mountaineer Bill Apperson, Buddy (Jack Pickford) falls in love with Martha Yarton (Gloria Hope), who must take care of her widowed father and six brothers. When Bill remarries and Buddy sullenly refuses to call the new bride "mother," Bill hits him with a stick and immediately regrets it. Buddy leaves home and wanders toward the Yarton house where he follows a thief inside and shoots. The thief escapes, but Buddy is caught and only escapes a jail sentence when Martha says she saw the thief. Buddy and Bill are reconciled, but the town, still suspicious, shuns Buddy. Meanwhile, Mary, Bill's wife, had left rather than come between a father and son. Buddy calls her "mother" and she returns, but he is uneasy when his father embraces her. When Martha says she does not love him, he leaves town for a year, but returns to find that the thief has confessed, Bill and Mary have a baby, and Martha still loves him.