Angus MacLellen tells of his boyhood on South Uist, and of how the people then lived; of Manx smugglers coming to Loch Eynort; of how at the age of thirteen he nursed his entire family through one of the dreaded fever epidemics that scourged the island; how he was caught and fined for poaching and of how he left Uist to go into camp with the militia, before working for farmers on the mainland in Perthshire and Argyll. MacLellan later returned to the family croft on South Uist to work at inshore fishing and crafting, and his reminiscences, full of humour, form a unique account of the life of a Hebridean crofter.