Tom Dolan is an impoverished youth who lives in upstate New York with his mother and two sisters. Set in the early part of this century, the story concerns young Tom's fascination with Bert Breen's barn, a huge structure that looms on the landscape, long ago deserted and uninhabited, and the mystery of Bert Breen's ''treasure," a large sum of money rumored to have been buried on the barn grounds. Tom gets the idea into his head that he would like to buy the barn some day and move it down to his own family's land, some seven miles away. The story builds to an exciting conclusion with the reconstruction of the entire barn and a sudden and unexpected answer to young Tom's dreams.