After the day's labor, the San Juan Capistrano Mission Fathers, returning from the fields, find a mother and a young child lying on the ground. The mother is dead, but the child lives. Francisco, taking the child in his arms, accompanied by Louis, returns to the Mission, while the other fathers bury the mother and offer prayers for the repose of her child. The baby grows up, and we see him eighteen years later ready for the holy orders to which Father Louis argues that he is destined, but Francisco advises the boy to go into the world and then make his choice. It was well suggested, for the boy had never seen the outside world, and fate leads him another way. After a series of romantic adventures in the semi-Spanish society of the period, Pedro returns to the only parents he has ever known to ask their permission to marry Senorita Isobel.
—Moving Picture World synopsis