`Nobody but a fool,' said the elder Miss Delaine, 'would think a girl of nineteen with no experience of any kind, brought up as a lady, could keep a village shop.' But Priscilla was not a fool, and she did think she could. It had been left to her by her sensible Border Scottish aunt Jane. One thing her aunt had determined on above all else: the Maitland family would never get the shop. The Maitlands, descendants of the old border reivers, the Taking Men, as they were called, inheritors of the old instincts but devious in the new commercial ways. And when Priscilla impulsively decided to defy her aunts and leave their home for the strange world of the little village, she began to realise the awful difficulties that lay ahead of her and knew that she would be very dependent on the help and goodwill of the villagers. And the first person to help her, dour and uncompromising though he was, was a Maitland. And a Maitland never helped anyone without wanting something in return.