The turbulent 'Killing Times' of the Covenanters is the backdrop to a desperate struggle between lifelong rivals.

John Burnet of Barns, the last of an ancient line of Border Reivers, returns home from abroad to find himself denounced as an agent of the Covenanters. Outlawed and deprived of his inheritance by his ruthless cousin, Captain Gilbert Burnet, John must now fight just to survive.John Buchan's first full-length work of fiction is a tale of adventure in the tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson.