An anonymous donor drops a gold coin in the shoe of a homeless girl as she sleeps. A gambler with a 'sure thing' borrows the coin and wins a fortune, but he can't find her again to repay her.

After three years at sea, Edward returns home to find his sweetheart forced into an engagement with a much older man.

Ramona, residing on her wealthy Spanish adoptive mother's rancho in California, falls in love with the Indian Alessandro. When Ramona is denied permission to marry Alessandro, the lovers elope, only to find a life of great hardship and unhappiness amidst the greed and injustice of the white landowners.