After the death of their mother, Jane Terrell agrees to stay home and do the housework, while her little sister Bessie attends school. When the new schoolmaster arrives he comes to their home to board and admiring Jane’s kindness, determines to give her lessons at home. Both girls learn to admire and then to love the handsome teacher and when Bessie sees that his evenings are all given to Jane she resents it, and confesses to her sister that she loves him. Jane sacrifices herself, discontinues her lessons and avoids the teacher. He is at a lost to understand her actions, for he has become deeply interested in her, while he looks upon Bessie as an interesting child. This was the condition when Jim Reeves, a salesman, stopped at the farm. Soon Bessie is more interested in him than she is in Jack Redmond. And then one night Bessie runs away to the city with him, leaving behind a note. One morning Jane finds her little sister near the door. She sobs out the miserable story to Jane of betrayal and desertion. Jack Redmond finds them and when he learns the truth swears to track down the salesman and force him to make retribution. Fearing the father’s wrath, they conceal Bessie in the barn and the schoolmaster hurries to the city. Jack finds the girl’s betrayer and asks him to come with him. Reeves is defiant until Jack shows him that the suspicious-looking bulge in his pocket is a revolver trained on him and he is forced to go with Jack to a justice of the peace. The three of them return to the farm and under the tree Jim had met little Bessie the justice performed the ceremony. Jack tells him to be gone and never come back. But with a newly awakened manhood he decides to live with the little girl, of whose innocence he had taken advantage, and together they go to the father. When Bessie shows him she is married the father forgives them and takes Bessie back into his heart. And out under the tree another romance reaches its culmination, for Jack and Jane reach a perfect understanding at last.