Joe Bell, wrongly imprisoned for burglary, gets released to a prison farm. His romance with the foreman's daughter leads to the foreman's accidental death. Fearing disbelief, Bell flees with the daughter, Mabel.

Embittered after serving time for a burglary he did not commit, Joe Bell is soon back in jail, on a prison farm. His love for the foreman's daughter leads to a fight between them, resulting to the older man's death due to a weak heart. Joe and Mabel go on the run as he thinks no-one would believe a nobody like him.—Ian Harries <[email protected]>

Twenty-five-year old Joe Bell, a vagabond, just wants a break in life so that he can ultimately have a place to hang his hat. Making that goal more difficult is his mistrust in authority as he was incarcerated for sixteen months for a crime he didn't commit - in fact, coming to the aid of the victim - and only released after the true perpetrator was caught. That jail time was despite his profession of innocence, the system failing him, only making him more defiant. His desire to achieve that goal is strengthened after he meets nineteen-year-old Mabel Alden, who can see his humanity despite the outward problems. Because of his previous prison time, Joe decides to go on the run when he is implicated in murder that he again did not commit. He and Mabel end up getting married, she vowing to stay with him on the run, her only stipulation being that he stays on the right side of the law. Due to their basic decency, they are able to make some friends along the way, some who give those potential breaks that they so need to make it out of their vagrancy. However, the authorities after them always seem to set them back. The question that thus arises is if they will give the law a second chance to show them that the truth will literally and figuratively set them free.—Huggo

Joe Bell, who has become a hardened cynic because he has served a prison term for a crime he did not commit, is searching for a place to settle down when he is picked up as a vagrant and sentenced to a county work farm. There, he meets Mabel Alden, the sympathetic stepdaughter of the brutal and drunken prison foreman, Charley, and the two fall in love. When Charley catches his daughter with Joe, a fight ensues in which the foreman is rendered unconscious. Panicked, Joe and Mabel flee the work farm and cross the state line, where, unable to afford the cost of a wedding, they agree to accept a free ceremony on a public stage. Immediately after completing their vows, they learn that Charley has died and that Joe is accused of his murder. Fearful that their marriage publicity will lead the police to them, they must constantly be on the run from the law. During their travels, they are befriended by Nick, who gives them a job at his diner, but when the police track them down, they hit the road once again. Joe is so desperate that he is on the verge of pawning his one possession, his camera, when he stumbles upon a bank robbery and captures it on film. Impressed with the pictures, newspaper editor Mike Leonard offers Joe a job on the paper, and Joe confesses his predicament to him. Mike covers for Joe and later, when members of the gang threaten Mike unless he returns the negatives, Joe saves his life. Joe's heroism attracts the attention of the newspapers, and as he prepares to flee once again, Mabel, aware that a life on the run is destroying them, turns in her husband. At his trial, the fugitive at last finds justice when he is acquitted and pronounced an innocent man, free to return to Mabel and his life.