Tom Chatterton is called a coward because he will not enlist in the Home Guard during the Civil War -- his mother is dying and he does not wish to leave while she is still alive.
Broken by grief after his mother's death, Olaf becomes a wanderer. He is treated cruelly until he is given a meal by a woman at the homestead where she lives with her husband and baby.
Angelo Diotti, a violinist, although encouraged by the eulogy of the musical profession, fails to impress Mildred Wallace, with whom he is in love, by his efforts on the violin.
As James Abbott, Frank Arthur and Martin Wynne, college chums, are bidding farewell to one another at the commencement ball, James discovers that May Scott, whom he loves, favors Frank.