Into this yarn of youthful adventure, Nancy Faulkner has woven the harsh and historically authentic facts of life for the luckless second son of a Virginia landowner before the Revolution. At a time when law, social attitudes, and family tradition all favored the first-born, younger sons had to make their own way. They might choose the professions, some form of business, or very often the promise of westward migration.

Christopher Gordon, aged sixteen, is the second son of Major Gordon of Watchhill plantation in colonial Virginia. Kit's older brother Charles is already in London, reading law and indulging his penchant for gambling. A letter from him hints at trouble too disagreeable for their father to know about. Charles is Major Gordon's favorite; Charles can do no wrong; Charles will inherit the plantation some day and with it his father's position of influence in the colony.

Kit has always admired his older brother and wants to be like him in every way, even to studying law. The hard-fisted Major, however, proposes to send Kit to England to be apprenticed to a merchant. With a good luck talisman in his pocket and little liking in his heart for the prospective drudgery of a counting room, Kit sails off to a period of fruitful labor and hair-raising adventure in the London of the 1750's. He finds his brother caught in the grip of a criminal gang--and discovers to his surprise that he himself has a natural bent for business.