'An exquisite book.' - E. M. Forster
'No other novelist of today can recapture more clearly than Mr. Reid the sense of early wonder and adventurous childhood.' - "The Times"
'An altogether remarkable book.' - "Glasgow Herald"
Left in the care of his unloving stepmother after his father's death, sixteen-year-old Tom Barber has a vivid dream one night in which he sees his Uncle Stephen, whom he has never met and who is rumoured to have been mixed up in scandal and the practice of black magic. Unhappy at home and not knowing what to expect when he arrives at Uncle Stephen's manor...