At a lavish luncheon in Palm Beach, Walker Farr, a wealthy and idle young man, bets that he can live in perfect contentment as a penniless hobo and sets out to prove it. On the road, Walker meets Kate Kilgour and her fiancé, Richard Dodd, but upon his arrival in the town of Marion he learns that she is being forced into the marriage by her mother, who owes Richard $5,000. Walker helps a deformed but cheerful river man named Etienne Pickerone to retrieve the body of a woman who has drowned herself, and after reading the note found on her clothing, he goes directly to her house and adopts her little girl Rose-Marie. For a time, Walker works as an ice wagon driver to support the child, but a typhoid epidemic caused by contaminated drinking water strikes the town, and Rose-Marie dies. Having learned that Col. Simon Dodd, Richard's uncle and a corrupt local official, is responsible for the epidemic, Walker leads an election campaign that results in Dodd's defeat. After Kate settles her debt with Richard, which leaves her free to marry Walker, the "hobo" discloses his real identity, and all ends happily.—AFI