Returning to his native Cape Cod village after many years of living at sea, Cy Whittaker finds the old homestead no longer the place of his boyhood. So-called "improvements" have been going on in his absence, and he finds it all sadly changed. The old man adopts the little daughter of a worthless drunkard, with the intent of giving the child an education. A Congressman from the district, years before, had appropriated property belonging to the child, and he, together with the father, fights to regain possession of the child. The sympathy of the village goes out to the father, but Cy Whittaker and Phoebe Dawes, the school teacher, manage to outwit the Congressman and the drunken father, and in the end the old bachelor and the school mistress fall in love with each other.