Charles Murray, a neighbor of Booker, wants to marry the latter's daughter, Louise, and uses a mortgage to overcome the young woman's objections. Louise wants to wed Wayland, her father's hired man, but Booker is frightened by the prospect of foreclosure of the mortgage and refuses to consent to the love match. A marriage of convenience is arranged, but this receives a rude jolt when Wayland falls heir to a small fortune. Booker opens the letter and reads the glad news and the hired man doesn't know why his employer suddenly changes his mind and consents to the wedding of the farm hand and his pretty daughter. When Murray is confronted with the change of affairs he demands an explanation. Booker shows him the letter. On the day of the wedding Murray sends a fake telegram to Trask informing him that the first news was wrong; the fortune was left to another man with the same name. Giving it to a messenger, he starts for the Booker home with a minister, believing that his plot will be successful and that in the circumstances Booker will be glad to throw out the hired man and accept the neighbor in whose hands is the fatal mortgage. But the messenger dawdles by the way and when Murray and the minister arrive there has been no cloud cast over the ceremony is in progress. Booker intercepts the telegram but refuses to read it until the couple have been pronounced man and wife. Then he reads. Later he goes for his shot gun, believing that Wayland has obtained Louise by a trick. Before murder is actually committed, however, a man arrives with the hired man's $10,000, the mortgage is paid off and Murray put to rout by a few well-directed charges of buckshot.