Noticing that Jim is partial to a drink, Ruth breaks off her engagement to him and turns to John, who until then had kept his love for her to himself. They get married and move to a cabin in the forest where John works as a woodcutter. In the meantime, Jim, who has become a hoodlum and ignores that his rival has married his former fiancée, runs into John at the lumber camp and challenges him to a duel for the same evening. He then goes to look for money to buy himself alcohol, and breaks into John and Ruth’s cabin. Surprised to find Ruth there, he realizes that she has married John and has given him a child. On leaving the cabin, he looks to the vengeance the duel is going to allow him to wreak. Yet, he eventually thinks better and, ashamed at his own idea and out of the love he still feels for Ruth, decides to spare her husband’s life. He shows up at the duel with a gun loaded with blanks.