After selling out a mining claim in the desolate and frigid north, Miriam Hardy moves to Tacoma with her husband and young daughter to start a new life. Things don't go as planned when her husband is murdered by a mysterious sinister eyed stranger, leaving Ms. Hardy a destitute widow. With the police unable to help find the murderer, Ms. Hardy is rescued by a kindly elderly beggar and taken in by a beggar's society. Miriam enrolls her daughter in a private seminary and lives a double life as a street beggar and a member of polite society, until a chance encounter one day leads her back to the sinister eyed stranger she has been seeking for years.