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Charles Ray returns to playing a bashful rural boy in this character study, loosely based on the James Whitcomb Riley poem. He's John Middleton, who protests furiously when his mother (Edythe Chapman) tells him that she has adopted an orphan girl. But John grows to love Mary (Patsy Ruth Miller) -- in fact, he falls in love with her. On their way home from a dance, he proposes but she turns him down, explaining that she is already engaged to his rival, Willie Brown (Ramsey Wallace). The startled John loses control of the horses and is thrown out of the carriage. While going through a semi-conscious dream state, he has a pair of visions. In the first he embraces Mary so violently that he kills her. In the second, he shoots Willie and then himself. He awakens from these nightmares determined to overcome these inner demons. Although broken-hearted, he stays out of Mary and Willie's romance.