After Owen Conway's mother dies, the ten-year-old is taken in by his tenement neighbors, but when the intoxicated husband beats him, Owen runs away. Later, Owen works chopping ice at the New York docks and defends a hunchback from assault by a street tough named Skinny. Owen leads a gang at age twenty-five. When District Attorney Ames takes socialite Marie Deering, who is anxious to see a gangster, to a café, Owen, to please Marie, saves Ames from a beating. Marie is so disturbed by the suffering she sees that she becomes a settlement worker. Marie teaches Owen to read and write, and he accompanies her on a riverboat excursion for slum dwellers, during which Skinny starts a fire. Warned by Ames that his relationship with Marie is doomed, Owen consults a priest. To return a favor, Owen hides Skinny after he stabbed a policeman, but then he attempts to rape Marie. When Owen returns, Skinny shoots at him and mistakenly kills Marie. Owen heeds her dying wish that he not take vengeance. After the hunchback shoots the fleeing Skinny, who falls to his death, the hunchback and Owen pray by Marie's grave.