Italian potter Tony adopts an Italian waif, little Tony, and takes him from New York to the West to realize a long-held dream of owning a ranch.

Insecure Beatrice Ridley lets her jealousy of her husband get the better of her when he begins receiving letters each morning from the Honeysuckle Inn, a roadhouse frequented by sportsmen. Consulting young attorneys, Widgast and Pidgeon, she finds their wives also suspicious about the goings on at the Honeysuckle Inn. Madcap complications ensue when all the characters meet there before everything is straightened out for all three couples.

In an Eastern Kentucky mountain town, illiterate Asa Whipple, the village blacksmith, marries beautiful Nance Haws over the objections of her father. A former aristocrat who was financially ruined, Jethro Haws wanted Nance to marry lawyer Rufus Couch. After Sandy Orr, an escaped convict employed by the kind-hearted Asa, kills Luke Andrews for implying that Nance's expected child is Couch's, Asa takes the blame. He is convicted by Couch, now district attorney, who destroyed the confession Orr left before running away.

Curtis Jaffray's mother, an Italian peasant, must steal to support herself, but genetic tendencies as well as economic necessity contribute to her penchant for robbery, as it is inherited by her son. After John, his British nobleman father, catches him stealing, Curtis runs away, but rather than try to change his nature, he decides to put his mother's legacy to good use. As a result, after he has risen to a prominent position in the United States, he starts stealing from those who belong to his own wealthy social set and then distributing the money among the poor.