Gabrielle Picard (Elda Hall) and Pierre Dupont (Rupert Julian) are lovers in a small French village in the early 1870s; Gabrielle's brother Anatole (Kingsley Benedict) is Pierre's best friend. The two young men are called to service by their country and go to Algiers. Anatole becomes the bugler and one day when he is commanded to sound the retreat, he sounds for the troops to charge instead. Anatole becomes a hero because of his action, but when the two men make their victorious return home, they find the Picard home ransacked and Gabrielle gone.

The quiet life style of Ruth Heck and her brother Lem, who belong to a religious sect called the Seekers, is disrupted when a judge imprisons Lem for a crime he did not commit.

H. Oboe Rhodes, a "knight of the road," limps into a large city with the idea of appeasing his hunger. His first quest is the welcoming doors of a saloon in which a large free lunch is advertised.