Nina Auvray's childhood and youth have been lonely, spent with an eccentric and miserly old uncle. The house they occupy is an old-time dilapidated mansion. Old Auvray dies suddenly. No will can be found. Nina is compelled to advertise the old home. A fine fellow buys the place, while Nina engages board in the village. Nina pines for the old house. At times she creeps up the hill and tearfully gazes at the closed windows and doors. Once, looking wearily about, she enters the house and goes through the rooms. Finally, overcome, she throws herself on the sofa and has a cry. It is here the new tenant finds her. Thus their acquaintance starts. Young Grey immediately sets about the repair of the old home and grounds. Two or three hands about the place he retains. One fellow, surly, and a hard drinker, Grey learns to distrust. After repeated and kind warnings regarding drunkenness, Lem Casey is discharged. He leaves cursing Grey. Nina one day is roaming through the woods, when she overhears Casey and a pal cursing and talking. Casey has planned to shoot Grey that night, and is gloating over the fact that Grey always sits by his desk, writing, within direct range of the south window. Nina, terrified, runs straight to her old home, waits for Grey to return, and in an ecstasy of terror and tears tells him all she has heard. Grey telephones for a couple of officers. Together they fix up a dummy at Grey's desk. Grey and the men hide in the thicket. Darkness falls. Lem Casey approaches. He shoots. Casey turns to flee, but is knocked down by the man he supposed he had murdered. The next day, in locating the bullet, a secret panel is discovered, containing the lost will. Nina is a rich woman, and all ends happily.