Karsten Bernick is the dominant businessman in a small coastal town in Norway, with interests in shipping and shipbuilding in a long-established family firm. Now he is planning his most ambitious project yet, backing a railway which will connect the town to the main line and open a fertile valley which he has been secretly buying up.
Suddenly his past explodes on him. Johan Tønnesen, his wife's younger brother comes back from America to the town he ran away from 15 years ago. At the time it was thought he had run off with money from the Bernick family business and with the urge to avoid scandal because he was having an affair with an actress. But none of this was true. He left town to take the blame for Bernick, who was the one who had actually been having the affair and was nearly caught with the actress. There was no money to take since at the time the Bernick firm had been almost bankrupt.