The film opens in a picturesque back street of a Spanish town, where an artist is busy at his easel. Chapo, the little hunchback, sees him and lingers by the artist. Pedestrians come and go and push him aside, but the boy is oblivious to everything but the painter and his magic. The art of the painter arouses a great latent gift in the hunchback. He so strongly covets artist's materials in the store of a curio dealer that he tries to steal them and is caught. A kind padre, himself an artist, rescues him from the irate dealer and teaches him to draw and paint. One day in the mission garden he sees lovely Eleanor, who becomes the idol of his dreams, the inspiration of his brush. She has, unfortunately, given herself to the profligate, Arguello, who abandons her. Chapo takes her to his own poor quarters and cares for her. Two years later she dies, and the hunchback, still rising in the world of art, adopts the two-year-old daughter. The scene advances twenty years. Chapo, the once neglected and despised, is a giant in the world of Parisian art and the adopted daughter has grown to be a beautiful young woman. They return to the old home, and there is Arguello, living a cumberer of the ground in his old age of vice, cards and liquor. He still has eyes and be leers upon the fair young flower leaning on the arm of Chapo. The indignant old padre calls on Arguello exclaiming, "she is your child." The shock and shame finally overcome him and he dies on the spot.
