Jane, the wife of a convict, receives a letter from her husband Bud, telling her that he will be home the next day and that he will keep straight for her and their daughter Runa's sake, and so that he will not be tempted, he asks her to get rid of a bag of tools he had hidden behind the fireboard in their bedroom. The overjoyed wife hides the tools in a nearby woodpile. Bud arrives home and finds work in a lumberyard, but his boss loses some money and unjustly suspects Bud of stealing it. The boss reports his loss to the police station while Bud, discouraged, goes home, and thinking it no use to be honest any longer, forces his wife and Runa to tell where they had placed the tools. He then starts out. The detectives are now on his trail and see him with the bag of tools in his possession. Bud eludes them and gets back to his shack just in time to put the tools back in the old hiding place. The detectives trail him to the shack, burst in the door, and search the house. Runa, in the bedroom, has seen her father replace the tools. She knows they are bad and decides to throw them in the river where her papa will never get them again. She escapes unseen with the tools. The detectives have found the letter describing the hiding place of the tools, and think they have Bud dead to rights, but get left when they go to the hiding place and find that the tools are gone. They read the letter again, thinking perhaps that they have made a mistake and that Bud does intend to lead a better life. They exit. Meantime Bud's employer discovers that his money was stolen by a discharged employee. He asks Bud's forgiveness and tells Bud to come back to work.