James Levering

Daniel Mylrea is the son of the Bishop of Man, the baron of the Isle of Man, whose temporal power is higher even than that of the Deemster, or governor. The Bishop desires Dan to become a minister, but he prefers to be a fisherman. The Deemster of Man has a son and a daughter, Mona and Ewan. Dan and Mona are in love. She consents to marry him when he can obtain her father's consent. Ewan, her brother, decides to become a clergyman, even in the face of his father's insistence that he take up business as a vocation. The Deemster opposes Dan's suit for Mona's hand because he has fallen from his high estate as the son of the Bishop by becoming a fisherman.

Elsie Green cannot decide which of her two suitors to marry. When she reads Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Feathertop", she dreams that she is its heroine Polly Goodkin, and this leads to her final decision.

In Scotland in 1751, young David Balfour is shanghaied aboard a ship where he meets Jacobite rebel Alan Breck Stewart with whom he escapes to the Scottish Highlands, dodging the redcoats.

A story of malice, deception, blackmail and pride set in small town America.