After her romance with Martin Stuart shatters, Kathleen St. John leaves Montreal for the little village of Montrouge, where she plans to teach school. Kathleen loses her way between the station and the village and is attacked in the woods by the town bully, Louis Courteau. Seeing a pretty woman in distress, Bateese Latour, a warmhearted lumberjack whose drunken temper tantrums have earned him the sobriquet "That devil, Bateese," beats off her attacker. A short time later, Bateese falls in love with Kathleen, and promising to abandon his drinking, he carries her off and marries her.