David Drummond comes midnight courting his true love, Jean; at the house of her swindling uncle, Samuel Pitcairn. With the aid of his manservant Willie, a ladder, a convenient window and a scheming maid, the lovers' plans to elope to a new life away from a post rebellious Scotland to Nova Scotia are temporarily thwarted by Pitcairn's blunderbuss. But the intervention of a heavily disguised Italian portrait painter changes their fortunes.