Intrigue

An outcast named Lo Dorman encounters a young woman lost in the woods. He defends her from danger in the forest and from Sheriff Dunn.

Lo Dormante, or "Sleeping Water," called by white men Lo Dorman, is a half-breed Indian. He has been raised by an old botanist who has a cabin in the Carquinez woods, but now that the old man is dead, Lo finds that white men will have nothing to do with him. So he goes to live in a hollow tree deep in the forest. In the mining camp, close at hand, Winslow Wynn, a free-and-easy Baptist preacher, has arrived with his pretty daughter Nellie. Nellie is a butterfly, shallow and insincere, but half the male population of the town is in love with her. Even Lo is in love with her, and his interest is returned by Nellie in a way that leads him to hope that he may marry her. Meanwhile, Teresa, a dance-hall girl who has stabbed her lover and is fleeing from justice, seeks refuge in the Carquinez woods and finds herself before the habitations of Lo. He takes her in and gives her shelter. To get a dress for her he begs one from Nellie. Wearing this dress, Teresa is seen by a suitor of Nellie and mistaken for her. Nellie has a great curiosity to see the home of Lo, so takes the stagecoach from her home to the village at the other side of the wood. Descending at the border of the woodland, she ventures along the trail. She is seen by the suitor who previously took Teresa to be her, and convinced that Nellie is meeting Lo clandestinely in the woods, he goes home and tells her father the scandal. Lo has by this time found the insincerity of Nellie and the true worth of Teresa, but he saves Nellies reputation in a thrilling sequence of scenes and wins his own happiness.