Whitby farmer, John Dugdale, is involved with a local band of smugglers, seeing it as an easy and harmless way of making money. But John is shocked when Mark Roper - his daughter Emma's childhood sweetheart - turns up on a secret mission for the local excise officer.

Emma is forced to face the harsh realities of a world she never knew existed, and must also decide who it is she really Ioves; the dependable Joe, or the handsome schoolboy, who has disappeared from her life.