Emma feels rejected and in her upset state she divulges the secret of ""Father"" Murphy's identity to Rodman, causing the church to reverse its support for the new parish.

Will has run away to St. Louis and fallen in with a Fagin-type and his band of criminals. Murphy enlists Farley's help in searching for Will and goes to convince him to come home.

Mae announces joyously that she's pregnant and the whole community rejoices... except Will. Finding out that the new bedroom Murphy is building is not for him, he feels ignored and finally, at the baby's birth, he runs away to St. Louis.

Comic episode in which the son of the original owner of Gold Hill Mine comes back to reclaim the school. Mae and Murphy are worried until they discover he's harmless, loveable... and a little bit nuts.

Moses discovers that music is the key to reaching a withdrawn blind girl. But the only way the school can afford a piano is by letting a local entrepreneur use the saloon building temporarily as a casino. Rodman seizes upon this to attempt to shut down the school ... but fails when he himself succumbs to the gambling bug.

Murphy and Eli must finally wade in to con the authorities into releasing the kids from the workhouse.

Murphy befriends an embittered black boy and teaches him a useful trade—wagon driving. But a wagon wreck causes the boy to lose the use of his hand, and Murphy must help him cope with living without the only task which ever made him feel worthwhile.

When Will happens upon a large gold nugget, his drunk father shows up in town and kidnaps him, convinced the boys know where there's more. Will is locked in a dank root cellar and nearly starves when his father is injured without telling the boy's whereabouts. Murphy and his dog, Mine, manage to find and save the boy.

Falling on hard times again, the school is seduced by an offer of ""state aid"" by a local official. Mae accepts the aid, only to learn that by doing so she has unwittingly agreed to some'terrible conditions ... including the departure of Murphy and Moses and putting the children to work making leather goods. She's finally able to kick out the unscrupulous officials when she discovers them tampering with the money earned by the children's labor.

Amanda, a pretty accomplice to a bank robbery, is in a stage wreck near Gold Hill while escaping from her crime. She dons the habit of a nun who died in the wreck to avoid capture, but winds up having to go to the orphanage where the sister was expected. She grows attached to the children, and warm and comic moments ensue before she and Murphy drop pretenses in a touching conclusion.

When Rodman's unruly son is kicked out of boarding school, Rodman enrolls him at Gold Hill making him pose as an orphan in order to spy on the school, and he learns the secret of Murphy's disguise. Murphy, Will and Ephram take the boy on a camping trip to keep him from telling their secret to his father. During the trip the boy comes to feel loved by Murphy and the others, so he agrees to keep their secret to himself.

A wealthy widow with a railroad fortune comes to Gold Hill hoping to adopt a son to take over the family business. She's very taken with Will, who would rather stay with Murphy, but Murphy is torn between his love for the boy and the advantages of his adoption. The widow finally sees that the bond between Murphy and the boy is something she doesn't want to destroy and she withdraws her adoption bid in a complicated and interesting way.

A mother delivers her son to Gold Hill, saying that he's been incorrigible in school. The real reason is that his father is a child abuser and the mother fears for her son's life. When the father comes after the boy, Murphy intervenes and accidentally kills the man while trying to restrain him. Murphy faces the crisis he's feared all his life—that his great size and strength might kill if unleashed.

Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) arrives in Jackson during his itinerant journalist days, and sets up a newspaper to fight the evil influence of Garrett. Ephram and Will join him as copyboys/reporters, and in a comical turn of events, they become the inspiration for Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

Murphy and Moses find trouble on a freight run when an old yarn-spinner convinces a whole town that Murphy is a famous bank robber. The fireworks begin when the real robber shows up.

Murphy and Mae join the Pinkertons on a cross-country train chase when one of their young orphans becomes heir to a large inheritance... and is kidnapped in an attempt to keep her from showing up to claim it.

The kids decide Moses needs some romance in his life, so they send away for a mail-order bride. Her arrival precipitates comic explosions in Gold Hill, but by the time Moses realizes she's a wonderful woman, she's decided to go back to her old boyfriend back east.

The orphanage stages an Open House for potential adopting parents, and this all-kid show examines the reactions of many of the children to finding new homes. Several of the kids find homes; our regulars are left behind until the next ""dream day.""

A handsome but ineffectual priest joins the school and provides comic opposition to Murphy and a pair of brothers in the orphanage, one of whom has a bed-wetting problem.

A runaway Southern boy, formerly a bugler in the rebel army, comes to the school and has trouble accepting Moses' status there. Simultaneously, undesirables in the area are forming a local K.K.K. chapter. The boy becomes involved with them and the group tries to railroad Moses out of town. Murphy, the Marshall, and the boy's long-lost father join Moses in doing battle with them.

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Claiming he's an orphan because his parents are dead, an old man joins the school to achieve a lifelong ambition... to learn to read and write. Comical conflict arises with Rodman and Tuttle, but the old man succeeds... and wins the heart of a ladyfriend.

When a teenage girl falls in love with Murphy, it forces him to examine his own feelings for Mae and he proposes marriage. At the same time, Father Parker's attempts to build a church in Jackson are thwarted by Garrett ... as a way of wreaking revenge on Murphy.

Young Matt is witness to a bank robbery. One of the robbers is a teenaged friend of Matt's who is the sole support of a sick mother, and Matt must wrestle with his conscience as he decides whether or not to turn in his friend.

Mae and Murphy take a well deserved honeymoon in the city, where they meet young Eli Matthews, a streetwise black orphan. They swear they won't get involved, but naturally they end up adopting him and taking him back to Gold Hill.