Returning to his camp after the theft of a herd of horses, the gypsy finds his wife dead and a newborn baby upon his hands. Hunted by the law and driven to extremities, he abandons his baby son at the door of a country squire. The squire is a bachelor. He takes the child in, adopts it and rears it to manhood with all the care of a real father. On his twenty-first birthday, the boy's betrothal to a girl of extreme goodness is announced. The shadow of the past now creeps upon the boy's life. One night a burglar enters the squire's house. He is captured. It is the gypsy, the father of the squire's foster son. The squire realizes the relationship. An instant later all is explained to the son. He is the son of a thief. The gypsy is sent to prison. Feeling his antecedents to be unworthy, the boy breaks his engagement. He figures that his father was a thief and that the taint of the blood will crop out sooner or later in him. He is enticed into the establishment of a vampire woman and she brings all her experience to bear in fascinating him. She partly succeeds and the boy sinks lower and lower. He is on the point of robbing his benefactor, the squire, when he awakens to the fact that he must overcome the imaginary taint of the blood and that he is a free agent for good or evil. He throws the vampire-woman over. She seeks him out and forgives all.
—Moving Picture World synopsis