An eccentric doctor captures two burglars who enter his house. He promises them freedom and a reward of $1,000 if they will go to the cemetery and obtain for him the body of a man whom the doctor contends died of water on the brain. They agree. A suitor for the hand of the doctor's daughter, who has been forbidden to enter the house, passes himself off as a corpse and is carried to the doctor. The suitor escapes and, in order to obtain the reward, Cook is forced to act as the "body." An attempt to carve him up leads to the greatest activity on the part of the "body" to escape the knives and saws of the doctor.