The young educated gentleman Guy Mannering, after leaving Oxford, is travelling alone through some of the wilder parts of Scotland. After losing his way at nightfall, he is directed to Ellangowan, the home of Mr Godfrey Bertram at the time of the birth of Henry Bertram. By request of the father of a newborn baby, Guy made a horoscope in which the child was predetermined the ordeals from the fifth to the twenty-first years of life. The most incredible adventures are waiting for Henry and his family adventure, in which not only money is at stake but life and honor of all old family. Everything that makes a story good is included in this one: mystery, romance, adventure, danger, conspiracy, pirates, mad old gypsy women, dashing heroes, misunderstandings, murders, kidnapping, mistaken identity, good-hearted country folk, heroines both persecuted and steadfast, and crowning it all that inimitable humor that colors all of Scotts writing.