Young Scattergood Baines arrives in the small New England town of Coldriver. Through some shrewd business maneuvering, he manages to open up a hardware store. Twenty years later he has become a prosperous and respected member of the community, a member of the local school board and the owner of a railroad that transports timber to the local sawmill. Problems begin to arise, however, when a young schoolteacher he has hired turns out to be not quite what he expected, and the mill owners pressure Scattergood to sell them his railroad, with the idea of raising the transportation fees paid to them by the local loggers.