In this melodrama, an unemployed executioner marries a woman he met in a bar. Together they live on a barge. Trouble ensues when he comes home to surprise her one day, and finds her abed with a dashing longshoreman. A fight ensues and the hangman is thrown overboard where he disappears. The woman then kills herself, and the stevedore is arrested and sentenced to die. Guess who gets to hang him? Fortunately for the laborer, the hangman admits his identity and the dockworker is saved.