In the Ozark Mountains, Jim Lane is shot by marshals while guarding the moonshine distillery run by the Matthews family. Lane successfully hides his wound from the marshals and is saved only when an apparent stranger, Daniel Howitt, appears at his house and helps Lane's daughter Sammy remove the bullets. Sammy soon grows fond of the good-natured stranger, who later saves a local child from choking, and expresses his desire to purchase land in the hill community. Sammy, who is in love with Young Matt Matthews, suggests Daniel buy land from the Matthews family. Young Matt's uncle, Old Matt, and aunt, Mollie Matthews, have experienced nothing but misery since the death of Mollie's sister Sarah, Young Matt's mother. Young Matt is embittered by years of having the superstitious community blame his family and the ghost of his mother for all their ills, and has sworn vengeance against his father, whose abandonment years earlier hastened his mother's death. Against Young Matt's wishes, Daniel purchases "Moaning Meadows," which is reportedly haunted by Sarah's ghost. Daniel feels at home there, and Sammy, whose love Young Matt resists to protect her from his tainted family, convinces Young Matt to befriend Daniel, whom Young Matt has threatened to kill. Daniel's gentle nature has already inspired many of the mountain folk to stop drinking and pursue a better way of life. When blind neighbor Granny Becky returns from a visit to a city doctor, for which Daniel has paid, the Matthewses attend the unveiling of her bandages. Her vision restored, Granny declares that Daniel is Young Matt's father, a fact that Sammy had already suspected. Young Matt becomes angry and grabs his gun from his little cousin Pete, but Sammy urges Young Matt against violence. However, Mollie fuels Young Matt's desire for revenge and struggles with her son for the weapon, which discharges into the boy. As he lays dying, Pete regains the voice he lost years earlier on the night of Sarah's death. Pete tells his mother that he remembers when she was gentle and loving but that she is now the one who curses the family. At dawn, Mollie lights a funeral pyre around her son and stays with him as the house is engulfed in flames. Young Matt confronts his father in Moaning Meadows and Daniel shoots his son. After an operation to save his life, Young Matt hears that years before, his father had been taken away by authorities after he killed a man and was unable to contact the family because he was serving a lengthy prison sentence. This experience convinced him to shoot Young Matt so that his son would not repeat his youthful mistake. Young Matt experiences a rebirth upon hearing his father speak, abandons his oath of vengeance, and opens his heart to love and to Sammy.