Soon after their engagement, Bill goes to sea, and Emily vows to stay true until his return. Unknown to her, Bill marries another woman from a different port. Emily waits faithfully for six years, finally becoming dangerously ill. When Bill suddenly appears in town with his family, Joe, who has loved Emily all along, forces Bill to make Emily's final moments happy by pretending he has returned to marry her.

Two sisters want to know whether there is romance in their future. One sister pulls the petals off of a flower, while the other has her fortune told by a gypsy. When the gypsy tells the fortune so as to serve his own purposes, complications soon develop.

In China, before leaving for America, Charlie Lee promises that he will never dishonour his family by cutting his pigtail. Later, as a laundryman in a California mining town, Charlie is tormented by local men but is finally befriended by a young woman and her cowboy sweetheart. One of Charlie’s tormentors is a well-dressed idler and, secretly, a bandit who robs the mail. The cowboy and the bandit become rivals for the girl’s affections. Suspicious of the bandit, Charlie follows him, observes him robbing a mail-carrier, and contrives to capture him, cutting off his pigtail to bind the bandit. Rewarded for the bandit’s capture, but disgraced in his own eyes for dishonouring his family, Charlie gives the cash reward to the young couple and surreptitiously leaves Golden Gulch.

Pippa awakes and faces the world outside with a song. Unbeknown to her, the music has a healing effect on all who hear her as she passes by.