A street-wise and tough orphan called Maverick is arrested for a petty theft and sent to an orphanage, but succeeds in concealing a watch he had stolen from an old shopkeeper just before his arrest. At the orphanage, he is recruited by a crooked warder for further and more serious crimes. But when two more children are admitted to the orphanage -- a boy called "Fatty" and a girl called "Little Mouse" -- he makes the first friends he has ever had. But when Maverick learns the girl is the granddaughter of the old shopkeeper he stole the watch from, and what ruin it brought to her family, he has a crisis of conscience.

Twelve-year-old Hai Wa sends a secret letter containing Japanese military information to the Eight Route Army during the anti-Japanese war.