Shakespeare's tragedy of two young people who fall desperately in love despite the ancient feud between their two families, and how the sins of the fathers bring disaster to their children.

The influence of Musa, a wildly beautiful dumb girl, upon every citizen of Gallows Gulch, a rough western mining town, is almost uncanny. They fear, yet hate her, and claim she has "the evil eye."

You would think that the death of his wife through his dissipation and neglect would have brought Jack Moreland to his senses. Instead he is more dissipated, and deserts his child, Clara, who is taken by her uncle, Harold Moreland, and brought up in ignorance of her father's existence.