Terry Dunniva, a retired sea-captain living in Marblehead, Massachusetts, adopts two children, Chrystal and Ned. As the girl grows to womanhood, Terry realizes his fatherly-love had grown to something stronger. He asks her to become his wife. Chrystal, who is in love with her foster-brother, consents rather than destroy Terry's happiness. On the day of their marriage, Ned returns from a long voyage with the intent of making Chrysal his wife. And, he, too, rather than destroy the happiness of his adopted-father, leaves to embark on an Artic voyage that might mean his death. When Terry learns of the sacrifice both Chrystal and Ned are making on behalf of his happiness, he takes Ned's place on the voyage and gets both to pledge that if he does not return, they will marry each other.

Buck, who is preparing to enter a theological seminary, aids his brother and some friends who are fleeing from justice, and thus implicated he is sent to prison for 2 years. There he meets again Hope Standish, a Salvation Army girl who had interested him. Returning home, he meets the old district circuit rider and promises to continue the circuit rider's work when he dies. The brother escapes from prison and is converted by Buck, who falls in love with Hope.

Jim Kyneton, once a member of an outlaw gang, joins the Texas Rangers and is forced to track down his former friends and his half brother Nick, who have been robbing a gold mine.

Harry's bride is murdered at their wedding along with Harry's mother and father, and the good-hearted outlaw turns grimly malevolent.

The prospector had taught the Indian boy the doctrine of peace. When his tribe resisted the attack of another tribe the boy did not take part. The din of the battle, as the horsemen circled them again and again, the moans of men caught under falling horses struck terror in the boy's heart The incensed warriors cast him from the tribe with the brand of a coward. It was then that his opportunity came to follow the white man's wonderful doctrine. "Big love man lay down life for friend,"

On a steamboat heading North, where his brother has struck gold, Mike Dane falls in love with Estelle MacDonald. When he arrives at the Canadian trading post, Dane learns that his brother has been murdered and his partner sentenced to death as the killer.