Frank Gardiner is a Goulburn boy accused of theft by his father, and ordered to quit. He meets his future wife Annie Brown and starts bushranging. His sweetheart's father throws her into the sea but Gardiner saves her. Gardiner partners with John Peisley in stealing horses. He is arrested and put in Pentridge Prison. He successfully escapes and joins Peisley. They rob the mailman and police. Then he steals over 2,000 oz of gold on the Bendigo goldfields. He is chased by the troopers, but escapes to the Gumtree Inn, where Annie Brown's stepfather, in revenge, informs the police of Gardiner's whereabouts, and the latter is arrested. Annie Brown, then pays her debt of gratitude by pluckily bailing up the police and effecting Gardiner's escape to the bushrangers' cave in the mountains. Then Annie and Frank leave for Queensland, and engage in storekeeping, but four years later the police identify him, and he is again arrested, and sentenced to 32 years' hard labor. In Darlinghurst Gaol he again meets Brown, who attempts to murder a warder, but is frustrated by Gardiner. Brown attempts, as a revenge, to kill the little daughter of the governor of the gaol, but again Gardiner prevents the crime, and for this, after 10 years' hard labor, is released, and exiled to America, where he goes with his wife and daughter, and the closing scene is laid at his house in San Francisco, where he has adopted the motto, "Honesty is the best policy."
—Stephen