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 to survive.

John Buchan's first full-length work of fiction is a tale of adventure in the tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson.

With an introduction by Tam Dalyell.

This edition is authorised by the John Buchan Society. 

"

'Buchan knew that you can't buck the consequences of your actions, and that your life is what you make of it. Perhaps his peculiarly Scottish combination of Romanticism and Calvinism - daring living and high thinking - is due to return to fashion'