A street-wise and tough orphan called Maverick is arrested for a petty theft and sent to an orphanage, but succeeds in concealing a watch he had stolen from an old shopkeeper just before his arrest. At the orphanage, he is recruited by a crooked warder for further and more serious crimes. But when two more children are admitted to the orphanage -- a boy called "Fatty" and a girl called "Little Mouse" -- he makes the first friends he has ever had. But when Maverick learns the girl is the granddau...