The scene opens with the slow progress of a barge making its way down a canal that is lined with oak trees.

The heroine's brutish father, a pole man, is somehow knocked off the barge, where he disappears under the serene and still surface of the water.

Reduced to poverty from the loss of her father, the heroine falls back upon her own resources to eke out a simple living by stealing.

She happens upon a rogue who has a similar lifestyle, and they join for a few brief acts of criminal mischief, but he is far more abandoned to petty crimes than she is.

A classic case of mistaken identity leads to the heroine being accused of setting fire to a French peasant's haystack.