Blessed with quiet but keen dark eyes, and a complexion given a white-rose tinge by the fresh Scottish air, Maggie MacLean has grown to learn and love the trade of her father, the village's soutar, or shoemaker.

A friend of her childhood has returned, she learns -- James Blatherwick, home from Edinburgh, where he was a divinity student. Yet the proud young man speaking so ably from the pulpit has a secret -- one he almost conceals from himself.

Then an even stranger arrival startles her, when she stumbles upon the crying bairn -- a baby, abandoned upon the moor.