Paolina is the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Vallenza, and lives as a beggar. She meets with Nunzio, a blind man who plays violin, exploited by his stepfather, and the two fall in love.
Lilly Meany has grown up amongst charlatans, including her father. She decides to become a faith healer, and her first victim, a rich hypochondriac woman, is easy enough to "cure.
When Rufus Asher suspects that Barbara Wier is plotting with his sister's husband, Edmund Hyde, he abducts Barbara and takes her to a lonely mountain retreat.
Unable to pay for her passage upon setting sail to the tropics to meet her mail-order husband, Dorothy Ryan assumes the identity of a wealthy passenger who is presumed dead.
Starvation faces the little post of Red Gold. Jack Thorpe, in a final effort to obtain food for his wife and baby, offers all his gold for one pound of meat.
In the Canadian province of Acadia, young Evangeline is betrothed to Gabriel. But before their wedding can take place, the British imprison the men and send them into exile with their lands forfeit to the Crown Evangeline follows the exiled men in hopes of finding her beloved, but even after he and the other Acadians are released in Louisiana, she cannot find him, always arriving at some locale just after he has departed.