The stage breaks down and little Janie, tired of sitting still, runs after a rabbit which she spies hopping by. She cannot catch the rabbit, but she stumbles over an old dinner bucket which she thinks must belong to the old miner who sits musing near her. She carries the pail to him, and he, rapt in memories, tells the child the story of his life: "It was drink which made me forget my home, my wife, everything that I possessed," he tells her, "One day I came home and found my wife gone, 'left with a stranger,' they told me later. I have never seen her since." While the old man muses, Janie opens the dinner pail and finds in it a note. The miner reads. It is a note which his wife left him when she went away. It tells him that "the stranger" is her brother, and that she went only to return to him when he should settle down. The stage is at last repaired, and Janie's mother, seeing her with the miner, goes to them. When the miner looks up at her, he recognizes her for his wife. She points to Janie and says, "Your own child."
—Moving Picture World synopsis