"The Brute" is a self-made man, wrapped up in his work, but loving his pretty and delicate wife, and his little son, Bobbie, with all the ardor of his great nature. He has no time to cultivate the niceties of life, and his rugged exterior and lack of the social graces often annoy his wife, who loves luxury and secretly covets the wealth and position her hard-working husband is unable to give her. One day an old suitor, now rich, crosses her path, and renews his former advances, in spite of the fact that her husband is his best friend and utterly unsuspicious of the state of affairs. Influenced by the refinement of bearing and the delicate attention of her adorer, she half promises that she will elope with him. He hurries west to dispose of his mine holdings so that he may be free to take his friend's wife to Europe. While in Denver he is stricken with appendicitis and dies after willing his entire fortune to the woman.