A narrator recounts a local tradition in which a celebrated Welsh chieftain pronounces a generational curse on a once-trusted friend, foretelling ruin, dwindling fortunes, and a final male descendant who will avenge the past by killing his father. The tale follows the afflicted Griffiths family as their estate and prospects decline, briefly brightening when an heiress brings new lands before gloom returns. Family tensions center on the dissipated elder son, whose drinking causes an early death, and the younger son, gentle, solitary, and devoted to Welsh antiquities, who, meant for the Church, remains at home. Themes include inherited guilt, landscape-imbued atmosphere, and the hold of tradition on ordinary lives.