The Broken Gate plot
Don Lane returns from college to visit his mother in the small town of Spring Valley, where she has worked in a hat shop to support him since his youth. There, Don discovers that he is an illegitimate child and that his mother is still being held in prison for this crime in Spring Valley. When he fights against vicious townspeople to defend his mother's name, he ends up in prison, though he is soon released by "Hod" Brooks, a lawyer and old friend of Aurora's. Shortly thereafter, Don is imprisoned again, based on circumstantial evidence, for the murder of the town drunkard. Desperate, Aurora visits Judge William Henderson, the guardian of Don's lover, Anne Oglesby. Aurora begs the judge to defend Don in court. When he refuses, Aurora threatens to expose Henderson as Don's father.