Jessie Price is young and beautiful, and happy to be travelling the drovers' roads on the way to London's Smithfield Market Her ambition is to raise herself up from her lowly position as a milkmaid and to run her own dairy For a while she succeeds, but before long the ambition leads to poverty and shame, as the man she loves is taken to Newgate Prison to face the death penalty for a crime he did not commit She knows that he is innocent, and will rely on her friend, Non Jones, to speak for him in court But Non is distracted by worries of her own