A wealthy Ossetian prince adopts a foundling and raises her as his own daughter, Fatima. As Fatima grows up, she falls in love with her stepbrother, Dzhambulat. However, when Dzhambulat goes to war and disappears, Fatima defies her father’s wishes and decides to marry a poor labourer.

A poor nobleman, Platon Samanishvili, has a big family. One day, his long-time widowed father, Bekina, tells him that he'd like to remarry. Platon has a problem now: if his father gets a child, he has to share his already small land property.