When her husband Pete is shot over a craps game, Molly McGill goes to work as a scrubwoman to support her two children.

An adaptation of the 1861 novel by English author Ellen Wood: The story of long-suffering Lady Isabel Carlisle cast in a modern setting.

After the death of his wife the baby was all the sheriff had left, the promise of hope in the future, and the reflection of all that was dear in the past. But a sheriff has no time to tread a cradle rocker, so the baby started off on the long journey to relatives across the desert. Then the sheriff was called away to hunt the "bad men" of the desert, and found there a deserted prairie schooner, the occupants dead and his baby gone.

When the double wedding takes two daughters away from the old man at once, the youngest, now the only one left, in outraged spirit promises never to leave her father, but soon she too is departing for a new home. Then comes a cold hard fact of life. The son-in-law claims his right to make a home alone for his wife. In his bitterness and anger, the father denies them both the house. Several years later the lonely old man meets at the gate a babe in arms. When he learns whose baby it is, heart hunger craves another sight, and sought, brings with it the only natural result.