Several Celtic works of art were stolen from the British Museum yesterday, one of them worth more than £50,000. Police say that the theft appears to be the result of an intricate and so far baffling plan. No burglar alarms were set off, the showcases involved were undamaged, and no signs have been found of breaking-in.

The missing objects include a gold chalice, three jewelled brooches and a bronze buckle. The chalice, known as the Trewissick Grail, had been acquired by the Museum only

last summer, after its dramatic discovery in a Cornish cave by three children. It had been valued at £50,000, but a Museum spokesman said last night that its true value was "incalculable," due to the unique inscriptions on its sides which scholars have so far been unable to decipher.

The spokesman added that the Museum appealed to the thieves not to damage the chalice in any way, and would be offering a substantial reward for its return. "The grail is an extraordinary piece of historical evidence, unprecedented in the whole field of Celtic studies," he said, "and its importance to scholars far exceeds its intrinsic value."

Lord Clare, who is a trustee of the British Museum, said last night that the chalice-

"Oh do come out of that paper, Barney," Simon said irritably. "You've read it fifty times, and anyway it's no help."

"You never know," said his younger brother, folding the newspaper and cramming it into his pocket. "Might be a hidden clue."

"Nothing's hidden," said Jane sadly. "It's all too obvious."

They stood in a dejected row on the shiny floor of the museum gallery, before a central showcase taller than the rows of identical glass cases all round. It was empty, save for a black wooden plinth on which, clearly, something had once been displayed. A neat silver square on the wood was engraved with the words: Gold chalice of unknown Celtic workmanship, believed sixth century. Found in Trewissick, South Cornwall, and presented by Simon, Jane and Barnabas Drew.

"All that trouble we had, getting there first," Simon said. "And now they've simply come and lifted it. Mind you, I always thought they might."

Barney said, "The worst part is not being able to tell anyone who did it."

"We could try," Jane said.

Simon looked at her with his head on one side. "Please sir, we can tell you who took the grail, in broad daylight without breaking any locks. It was the powers of the Dark."

"Pop off, sonny," Barney said. "And take your fairy stories with you."

"I suppose you're right," Jane said. She tugged distractedly at her pony-tail. "But if it was the same ones, somebody might at least have seen them. That horrible Mr Hastings---"

"Not a chance Hastings changes, Great-Uncle Merry said. Don't you remember? He wouldn't have the same name, or the same face. He can be different people, at different times."

"I wonder if Great-Uncle Merry knows," Barney said. "About this." He stared at the glass case, and the small, lonely black plinth inside.

Two elderly tadies in hats came up beside him. One wore a yellow flowerpot, the other a pyramid of pink flowers. "That's where they pinched it from, the attendant said," one told the other. "Fancy! The other cases were over here."

"Tut-tut-tut-tut," said the other lady with relish, and they moved on. Absently Barney watched them go, their footsteps clopping through the high gallery. They paused at a showcase over which a long-legged figure was bending. Barney stiffened. He peered at the figure.

"We've got to do something," Simon said. "Just got to."

Jane said, "But where do we start?"

The tall figure straightened to let the be-hatted ladies approach the glass case. He bent his head courteously, and a mass of wild white hair caught the light.

Simon said, "I don't see how Great-Uncle Merry could know-- I mean he isn't even in Britain, is he? Taking that year off from Oxford. Sab-whatsit."

"Sabbatical," Jane said. "In Athens. And not even a card at Christmas."

Barney was holding his breath. Across the gallery, as the crime-loving ladies moved on, the tall white-haired man turned towards a window; his beak-nosed, hollow-eyed profile was unmistakable. Barney let out a howl. "Gumerry!"

Simon and Jane trailed blinking in his wake as he skidded across the floor.

"Great-Uncle Merry!"

"Good morning," said the tall man amiably.

"But Mum said you were in Greece!"

"I came back."

"Did you know someone was going to steal the grail?" Jane said.

Her great-uncle arched one white-bristling eyebrow at ber but said nothing.

Barney said simply, "What are we going to do?"

"Get it back," said Great-Uncle Merry.

"I suppose it was them?" Simon said diffidently. "The other side? The Dark?"

"Of course."

"Why did they take the other stuff, the brooches and things?

"To make it look right," said Jane.

Great-Uncle Merry nodded. "It was effective enough. They took the most valuable pieces. The police will think they were simply after the gold." He looked down at the empty showcase; then his gaze flicked up, and each of the three felt impelled to stare motionless into the deep-set dark eyes, with the light behind them like a cold fire that never went out.

"But I know that they wanted only the grail," Great-Uncle Merry said, "to help them on the way to something else. I know what they intend to do, and I know that they must at all costs be stopped. And I am very much afraid that you three, as the finders, will be needed once more to give help---far sooner than I had expected."

"Shall we?" said Jane slowly.

"Super," said Simon.

Barney said, "Why should they have taken the grail now? Does it mean they've found the lost manuscript, the one that explains the cipher written on the sides of the grail?"

"No," said Great-Uncle Merry. "Not yet."

"Then why-"

"I can't explain, Barney." He ****** his hands into his pockets and hunched his bony shoulders. "This matter involves Trewissick, and it does involve that manuscript. But it is part of something very much larger as well, something which I may not explain. I can only ask you to trust me, as you all trusted me once before, in another part of the long battle between the Light and the Dark. And to help, if you are sure you feel able to give help, without perhaps ever being able fully to understand what you are about."

Barney said calmly, pushing his tow-coloured forelock out of his eyes: "That's all right."

"Of course we want to help," Simon said eagerly.

Jane said nothing. Her great-uncle put one finger under her chin, tilted her head up and looked at her. "Jane," he said gently. "There is absolutely no reason to involve any of you in this if you are not happy about it."

Jane looked up at the strongly-marked face, thinking how much it looked like one of the fierce statues they had passed on their way through the museum. "You know I'm not scared," she said. "Well, I mean I am a bit, but excited-scared. It's just that if there's going to be any danger to Barney, I feel----I mean, he's going to scream at me, but he is younger than we are and we oughtn't---"

Barney was scarlet. "Jane!"

"It's no good yelling," she said with spirit. "If anything happened to you, we'd be responsible, Simon and me."

"The Dark will not touch any of you," Great-Uncle Merry said quietly. "There will be protection. Don't worry. I promise you that. Nothing that may happen to Barney will harm him."

They smiled at one another.

"I am not a baby!" Barney stamped one foot in fury.

"Stop it," said Simon. "Nobody said you were."

Great-Uncle Merry said, "When are the Easter holidays, Barney?"

There was a short pause.

"The fifteenth, I think," Barney said grumpily.

"That's right," Jane said. "Simon's start a bit before that, but we all overlap by about a week."

"It's a long way off," Great-Uncle Merry said.

"Too late?" They looked at him anxiously.

"No, I don't think so... . Is there anything to prevent the three of you from spending that week with me in Trewissick

"No!"

"Nothing!"

"Not really, I was going to a sort of ecology conference, but I can get out of that,. . . ." Simon's voice trailed away, as he thought of the little Cornish village where they had found the grail. Whatever adventure might now follow had begun there, deep inside a cave in the cliffs, over sea and under stone. And at the heart of things now, as he had been then, would always be Great-Uncle Merry, Professor Merriman Lyon, the most mysterious figure in their lives, who in some incomprehensible way was involved with the long struggle for control of the world between the Light and the Dark.

"I'l speak to your parents," his great-uncle said.

"Why Trewissick again?" Jane said. "Will the thieves take the grail there?"

"I think they may."

"Just one week," Barney said, staring pensively at the empty showcase before them. "That's not much for a quest. Will it really be enough?"

"It is not very long," said Great-Uncle Merry. "But it Will have to do."

____________________________________________

Will eased a stem of grass out of its sheath and sat down on a rock near the front gate, despondently nibbling. The April sunshine glimmered on the new--green leaves of the lime trees; a thrush somewhere shouted its happy self-echoing song. Lilac and wallflowers scented the morning, Will sighed, They were all very well, these joys of a Buckinghamshire spring, but he would have appreciated them more with someone there to share the Easter holidays. Half his large family still lived at home, but his nearest brother James was away at a Scout camp for the week, and the next in line, Mary, had disappeared to some Welsh relations to recuperate from mumps. The rest were busy with boring older preoccupations. That was the trouble with being the youngest of nine; everyone else seemed to have grown up too fast.

There was one respect in which he, Will Stanton, was far older than any of them, or than any human creature, But only he knew of the great adventure which had shown him, on his eleventh birthday, that he had been born the last of the Old Ones, guardians of the Light, bound by immutable laws to defend the world against the rising Dark. Only he knew---

and because he was also an ordinary boy, he was not thinking of it now.

Raq, one of the family dogs, pushed a damp nose into his hand. Will fondled the floppy cars, "A whole week," he said to the dog, "What shall we do? Go fishing?"

The ears twitched, the nose left his hand; stiff and alert, Raq turned towards the road. In a moment or two a taxi drew up outside the gate: not the familiar battered car that served as village taxi, but a shiny professional vehicle from the town three miles away, The man who emerged was small, balding and rather rumpled, wearing a raincoat and carrying a large shapeless holdall. He dismissed the taxi, and stood looking at Will.

Puzzled, Will scrambled up and came to the gate. "Good morning," he said.

The man stood solemn for a moment, then grinned. "You're Will," he said. He had a smooth round face with round eyes, like a clever fish.

"That's right," Will said.

"The youngest Stanton. The seventh son. That's one up on me---I was only the sixth."

His voice was soft and rather husky, with an odd mid-Atlantic accent; the vowels were American, but the intonation was English. Will smiled in polite incomprehension.

"Your father was the seventh in that family," the man in the raincoat said. He grinned again, his round eyes crinkling at the corners, and held out his hand. "Hi. I'm your Uncle Bill."

"Well I'm blowed!" said Will. He shook the hand. Uncle Bill. His namesake. His father's favourite brother, who had gone off to America years and years ago and set up some sort of successful business----pottery, wasn't it? Will did not remember ever having seen him before; he was sent a Christmas present each year by this unknown Uncle Bill, who was also his godfather, and he wrote a chatty letter of thanks annually as a result, but the letters had never had a reply.

"You've grown some," said Uncle Bill as they walked to the house. "Last time we met, you were a little scrawny bawling thing in a crib."

"You sound like an American," Will said.

"No wonder," said Uncle Bill. "I've been one for the last ten years."

"You never answered my Christmas letters."

"Did that bother you?"

"No, not really."

They both laughed, and Will decided that this uncle was all right. Then they were in the house, and his father was coming downstairs; pausing, with an incredulous blankness in his face.

"Billy!"

"Roger!"

"My God," said Will's father, "what's happened to your hair?"

Reunions with long-lost relatives take time, especially in large families. They were at it for hours. Will quite forgot that he had been gloomy over the absence of companions. By lunchtime he had learned that his Uncle Bill and Aunt Fran were in Britain to visit the Staffordshire potteries and the chinaclay district of Cornwall, where they had business of some complex Anglo-American kind. He had heard all about their two grown-up children, who seemed to be contemporaries of his eldest brother Stephen, and he had been told rather more than he really wanted to know about the state of Ohio and the china-making trade. Uncle Bill was clearly prosperous, but this seemed to be only his second trip to Britain since he had emigrated more than twenty years before. Will liked his twinkling round eyes and laconic husky voice. He was just feeling that the prospects for his week's holiday had greatly improved when he found that Uncle Bill was staying only one night, on his way from a business trip to London, and travelling on to Cornwall the next day to join his wife. His spirits drooped again.

"Friend of mine's picking me up, and we're driving down. But I tell you what, Frannie and I'll come and spend a few days on our way back to the States. If you'll have us, that is."

"I should hope so," said Will's mother. "After ten years and about three letters, my lad, you don't get away with one mouldy twenty-four hours."

"He sent me presents," Will said. "Every Christmas."

Uncle Bill grinned at him. "Alice," he said suddenly to Mrs Stanton, "since Will's out of school this week, and not too busy, why don't you let me take him to Cornwall for the holiday? I could put him on a train back at the end of the week. We've rented a place with far more space than we need. And this friend of mine bas a couple of nephews coming down, about Will's age, I believe."

Will made a strangled whooping sound, and looked anxiously at his parents. Frowning gravely, they began a prodictable duet.

"Well, that's really very good of---"

"If you're sure he won't be---"

"He'd certainly love to---"

"If Frannie wouldn't----"

Uncle Bill winked at Will. Will went upstairs and began to pack his knapsack. He put in five pairs of socks, five changes of underwear, six shirts, a pullover and a sweater, two pairs of shorts, and a flashlight. Then he remembered that his uncle was not leaving until the next day, but there seemed no point in unpacking. He went downstairs, the knapsack bouncing on his back like an overblown football.

His mother said, "Well, Will, if you'd really like to---Oh."

"Good-by, Will," said his father.

Uncle Bill chuckled. "Excuse me," he said. "If might borrow your phone---"

"I'll show you." Will led him out into the hall. "It's not too much, is it?" he said, looking doubtfully at the bulging knapsack.

"That's fine." His uncle was dialling "Hallo? Hallo, Merry. Everything okay? Good. Just one thing. I'm bringing my youngest nephew with me for a weck. He doesn't have much luggage" ---he grinned at Will---"but I just thought I'd make sure you weren't driving some cute little two-seater. . . . Ha-ha. No,

not really in character. . . okay, great see you tomorrow." He hung up.

night, buddy he

"All right, buddy," he said to Will. "We leave at nine in the morning. That suit you, Alice?" Mrs Stanton was crossing the hall with the tea-tray.

"Splendid," she said.

Since the beginning of the telephone call, Will had been standing very still. "Merry?" he said slowly. "That's an unusual name."

"It is, isn't it?" said his uncle, "Unusual guy, too. Teaches at Oxford. Brilliant brain, but I guess you'd call him kind of odd-- very shy, hates meeting people. He's very reliable, though," he

added hastily to Mrs Stanton. "And a great driver."

"Whatever's the matter, Will?" said his mother, "You look as though you'd seen a ghost. Is anything wrong?

"Nothing," said Will. "Oh no. Nothing at all."

\* \* \*

Simon, Jane and Barney struggled out of St Austell station beneath a clutter of suitcases, paper bags, raincoats and paperbacks. The crowd from the London train was dwindling about them, swallowed by cars, buses, taxis.

"He did say he'd meet us here, didn't he?"

" 'Course he did."

"I can't see him."

"He's a bit late, that's all."

"Great-Uncle Merry is never late."

"We ought to find out where the Trewissick bus goes from, just in case.'

"No, there he is, I see him. I told you he was never late." Barney jumped up and down, waving. Then he paused. "But he's not on his own. There's a man with him." A faint note of

outrage crept into his voice. "And a boy."

\*

A car hooted peremptorily once, twice, three times outside the Stantons' house.

"Here we go," said Uncle Bill, seizing his holdall and Will's knapsack.

Will hastily kissed his parents good-by, staggering under the enormous bag of sandwiches, thermos flasks and cold drinks that his mother dumped into his arms.

"Behave yourself," she said.

"I don't suppose Merry will get out of the car," said Bill to her as they trooped down the drive. "Very shy character, pay no attention. But he's a good friend. You'll like him, Will."

Will said, "I'm sure I shall."

At the end of the drive, an enormous elderly Daimler stood waiting.

"Well well," said Will's father respectfully.

"And I was worrying about space!" said Bill. "I might have known he'd drive something like this. Well, good-by, people. Here, Will, you can get in front."

In a flurry of farewells they climbed into the dignified car; a large muffler-wrapped figure sat hunched at the wheel, topped by a terrible hairy brown cap.

"Merry," said Uncle Bill as they moved off, "this is my nephew and godson. Will Stanton, Merriman Lyon."

The driver tossed aside his dreadful cap, and a mop of white hair sprang into shaggy freedom. Shadowed dark eyes glanced sideways at Will out of an arrogant, hawk-nosed profile.

"Greetings, Old One," said a familiar voice into Will's mind

"It's marvellous to see you," Will said silently, happily.

"Good morning, Will Stanton," Merriman said.

"How do you do, sir," said Will.

\*

There was considerable conversation on the drive from Buckinghamshire to Cornwall, particularly after the picnic lunch, when Will's uncle fell asleep and slumbered peacefully

all the rest of the way.

Will seid at last: "And Simon and Jane and Barney have no idea at all that the Dark timed its theft of the grail to match the making of the Greenwitch?"

"They have never heard of the Greenwitch," Merriman said. "You will have the privilege of telling them. Casually, of course."

"Hmm," Will said. He was thinking of something else. "I'd feel a lot happier if only we knew what shape the Dark will take"

"An old problem. With no solution." Merriman glanced sideways at him, with one bristly white eyebrow raised. "We have only to wait and see. And I think we shall not wait for

long. . . . ."

Fairly late in the afternoon, the Daimler hummed its noble way into the forecourt of the railway station at St Austell, in Comwall. Standing in a small pool of luggage Will saw a boy a little older than himself, wearing a school blazer and an air of sef-conscious authority; a girl about the same height, with long hair tied in a pony-tail, and a worried expression; and a small boy with a mass of blond, almost white hair, sitting placidly on

a suitcase watching their approach.

"If they are to know nothing about me," he said to Merriman in the Old Ones' speech of the mind, "they will dislike me extremdy, I think."

"That may very well be true," said Merriman. "But not one of us has any feelings that are of the least consequence, compared to

he urgency of this of this quest."

Will sighed. " Watch for the Greenwitch," he said.

to be continued.....

"I THOUGHT WE'D PUT YOU IN HERE, JANE," MERRIMAN SAID, opening a bedroom door and carefully stooping to go through. "Very small, but the view's good."

"Oh!" said Jane in delight. The room was painted white, with gay yellow curtains, and a yellow quilt on the bed. The ceiling sloped down so that the wall on one side was only half the height of the wall on the other, and there was space only for a bed, a dressing-table and a chair. But the little room seemed full of sunshine, even though the sky outside the curtains was grey. Jane stood looking out, while her great-uncle went on to show the boys their room, and she thought that the picture she could see from the window was the best thing of all.

She was high up on the side of the harbour, overlooking the boats and jetties, the wharf piled with boxes and lobster-pots, and the little canning factory. All the life of the busy harbour was thrumming there below her, and out to the left, beyond the harbour wall and the dark arm of land called Kemare Head, lay the sea. It was a grey sea now, speckled with white. Jane's gaze moved in again from the flat ocean horizon, and she looked straight across to the sloping road on the opposite side of the harbour, and saw the tall narrow house in which they had stayed the summer before. The Grey House. Everything had begun there,

Simon tapped on the door and put his head round. "Hey, that's a super view you've got. Ours hasn't any, but it's a nice room, all long and skinny."

"Like a coffin," said Barney in a hollow voice, behind the door.

Jane giggled. "Come on in, look at the Grey House over there. I wonder if we'll meet Captain Thing, the one Gumerry rented it from?"

"Toms," Barney said. "Captain Toms. And I want to see Rufus, I hope he remembers me. Dogs do have good memories, don't they?"

"Try walking through Captain Toms' door and you'll find out," said Simon. "If Rufus bites you, dogs don't have good memories."

"Very funny."

"What's that?" Jane said suddenly. "Hush!"

They stood in a silence broken only by the sounds of cars and sea gulls, overlaid by the murmur of the sea. Then they heard a faint tapping sound.

"It's on the other side of that wall! What is it?"

"Sounds like a sort of pattern. I think it's Morse. Who knows Morse?"

"I don't." Jane said. "You should have been a Boy Scout."

"We were supposed to learn it last year at school," Barney said hesitantly. "But I don't... wait a minute. That's a D . . . don't know that one . . . E . . . er . . . W . . . and S, that's easy. There it goes again. What on earth-?"

"Drews," Simon said suddenly. "Someone's tapping 'Drews.' Calling us."

"It's that boy," said Jane. "The house is two cottages joined together, so he

must have the exact same room as this one, on the other side of the wall."

"Stanton," said Barney.

"That's right. Will Stanton. Tap back to him, Barney."

"No," Barney said.

Jane stared at him. His long yellow-white hair had fallen sideways, masking his face, but she could see the lower lip jutting mulishly in a way she knew well.

"Whyever not?"

"He's stopped now," Barney said evasively.

"But there's no harm in being friendly."

"Well. No. Well. Oh, I don't know... he's a nuisance, I don't see why Great-Uncle Merry let him come. How can we find out how to get the grail back with some strange kid hanging round?"

"Great-Uncle Merry probably couldn't get rid of him." Jane said. She tugged her hair loose and took a comb from her pocket. "I mean, it's his friend Mr Stanton who's renting the cottages, and Will's Mr Stanton's nephew. So that's that, isn't it?"

"We can get rid of him easily enough," Simon said confidently. "Or keep him away. He'll soon find out he's not wanted, he looks fairly quick on the uptake."

"Well, we can at least be polite," said Jane. "Starting now- it's suppertime in a few minutes."

"Of course," Simon said blandly. "Of course."

. . .

"It's a marvellous place," Will said, glowing. "I can see right over the harbour from my room. Who do the cottages belong to?"

"A fisherman called Penhallow," said his uncle. "Friend of Merry's. They must have been in the family for a while, judging by that." He waved at a large yellowed photograph over the fireplace, ornately framed, showing a solemn-looking Victorian gentleman in stiff collar and dark suit. "Mr Penhallow's grand- daddy, I'm told. But the cottages are modernized, of course. They can be let either separately or together-we took both when Merry decided to invite the Drew kids. We'll all eat in here together."

He waved at the cheerful room, a pattern of bookcases and armchairs and lamps, very new and very old, with a large solid table and eight dignified high-backed chairs.

"Have you known Mr Lyon a long time?" Will said curiously.

"Year or two," Bill Stanton said, stretching in his armchair, ice clinking in a glass in his hand. "Met him in Jamaica, didn't we, Fran? We were on holiday-I never did find out whether Merry was vacationing or working."

"Working," said his wife, busy setting the table. She was calm and fair, a tall, slow-moving person: not at all what Will had expected from an American. "On some government survey. He's a professor at Oxford University." she said reverently to Will. "A very very clever man. And such a sweetie-he came all the way to Ohio to spend a few days with us last fall, when he was over giving a lecture at Yale."

"Ah," said Will thoughtfully. He was prevented from asking more questions by a sudden noise from the wall beside him. A large wooden door swung open, narrowly missing his back, revealing Merriman in the act of closing another identical door beyond it,

"This is where the two cottages connect," Merriman said, looking down at Will's surprise with a faint grin. "They lock both doors if the two are let separately."

"Supper won't be long." said Fran Stanton in her soft drawl. As she spoke, a small stout lady with a grey knot of hair came into the room behind her, bearing a tray rattling with cups and plates.

"Evenin', Perfessor," she said, beaming at Merriman. Will liked her face instantly: all its lines seemed carved by smiling.

"Evening, Mrs Penhallow."

"Will," said his uncle, "this is Mrs Penhallow. She and her husband own these cottages. My nephew Will."

She smiled at him, setting down the tray. "Welcome to Trewissick, m'dear. We'll make sure you do have a wonderful holiday, with those other three scallywags."

"Thank you," Will said.

The dividing door burst open, and the three Drews came piling in.

"Mrs Penhallow! How are you?"

"Have you seen Rufus about?"

"Will Mr Penhallow take us fishing this time?"

"Is that awful Mrs Palk still here? Or her nephew?"

"How's the White Heather?"

"Slowly, slowly," she said, laughing.

"Well," Barney said. "How's Mr Penhallow?"

"He'm fine. Out on the boat now, o' course. Now you just bide a moment while I get your supper." She bustled out.

"I can see you three know your way about the place," said Bill Stanton, his round face solemn.

"Oh yes," said Barney complacently. "Everyone knows us here."

"We shall have a lot of friends to see," said Simon rather too loudly, with a quick sideways glance at Will.

"Yes, they've been here before. They stayed for two weeks last summer," said Merriman. Barney looked at him crossly. His great-uncle's craggy, deep-lined face was impassive.

"Three weeks," said Simon.

"Was it? I beg your pardon."

"It's lovely to be back." Jane said diplomatically "Thank you very much for letting us come, Mr Stanton, Mrs Stanton."

"You're very welcome." Will's uncle waved a hand in the air. "Things have worked out fine-you three and Will can all have a great time together, and leave us square old characters to ourselves."

There was a very small silence. Then Jane said brightly, without looking at her brothers, "Yes, we can."

Will said to Simon, "Why is it called Trewissick?"

"Er," said Simon, taken aback, "I really don't know. Do you know what it means, Gumerry?"

"Look it up," said his great-uncle coolly. "Research sharpens the memory.”

Will said diffidently, "It's the place where they have the Greenwitch ceremony, isn't it?”

The Drews stared at him. "Greenwitch? What's that?"

"Quite right," Merriman said. He looked down at them, a twitch beginning at one side of his mouth.

"It was in some book I read about Cornwall," Will said.

"Ah," Bill Stanton said. "Will is quite an anthropologist his father was telling me. Watch out. He's very big on ceremonies and such."

Will seemed to look rather uncomfortable. "It's just a sort of spring thing." he said. "They make a leaf image and chuck it into the sea. Sometimes they call it the Greenwitch and some times King Mark's Bride. Old custom."

"Oh yes. Like the carnival," Barney said dismissively. "In the summer."

"Well no, not quite." Will rubbed his ear, sounding apologetic. "I mean, that Lammas carnival, it's more a sort of tourist affair, isn't it?"

"Huh!" said Simon.

"He's right, you know," Barney said. "There were far more visitors than locals dancing about the streets last summer. Including me." He looked at Will rather thoughtfully.

"Here we be!" cried Mrs Penhallow, materialising in the room with a tray of food almost as big as herself.

"Mrs Penhallow must know all about the Greenwitch," said Fran Stanton in her soft American voice. "Don't you, Mrs Penhallow?" It was a well-meaning remark intended to keep the peace, in a situation which seemed to her a little prickly. But it had the reverse effect. The small round Cornishwoman set down her tray abruptly on the table, and the smile dropped from her face.

"I don't hold with talk of witches," she said, politely but finally, and went out again.

"Oh my," said Aunt Fran in dismay.

Her husband chuckled. "Yankee, go home," he said.

. . .

"What is this Greenwitch affair really, Gumerry?" Simon said next morning.

"Will told you."

"All he knew was what he got out of some book."

"He's going to be a nuisance, I'm afraid," Barney said with distaste.

Merriman looked down at him sharply. "Never dismiss anyone's value until you know him."

Barney said, "I only meant-"

"Shut up, Barney," said Jane.

"The making of the Greenwitch," said Merriman, "is an old spring rite still celebrated here, for greeting summer and charming a good harvest of crops and fish. In a day or two, as it happens. If you will all tread a little more gently, Jane might be able to watch it."

"Jane?" said Barney. "Only Jane"

"The making of the Greenwitch is very much a private village affair," Merriman said. Jane thought his voice seemed strained, but his face was so near the roof of the narrow landing as to be lost in shadow. "No visitors are normally allowed near. And of the locals, only women are allowed to be present."

"Good grief!" said Simon in disgust.

Jane said, "Surely we ought to be doing something about the grail, Gumerry? I mean after all that's why we're here. And we haven't got long."

"Patience." Merriman said. "In Trewissick, as you may recall, you never had to go looking for things to happen. They tended to happen to you."

"In that case," Barney said, "I'm going out for a bit." He held the flat book in his hand unobtrusively against his side, but his great-uncle looked down from a height like a lighthouse.

"Sketching?" he said.

"Uh-huh," said Barney reluctantly. The Drews' mother was an artist. Barney had always expressed horror at the idea of possessing the same talent, but in the last twelve months he had been disconcerted to find it creeping up on him.

"Try drawing this terrace from the other side," Merriman said. "With the boats as well."

"All right. Why?"

"Oh, I don't know," said his great-uncle vaguely. "It might come in handy. A present for someone. Perhaps even for me."

. . .

Crossing the quay, Barney passed a man sitting at an easel. It was a common enough sight in Trewissick, which like many of the more picturesque villages in Cornwall was much frequented by amateur painters. This particular artist had a very great deal of uncombed dark hair, and a square, hefty frame. Barney paused, and perped over his shoulder. He blinked. On the case was a wild abstract in crude bright colours, bearing no visible relation at all to the scene in the harbour before them; it was unexpected, compared to the neat, anaemic little water colours that nineteen out of twenty Trewissick harbour painters produced. The man was painting away like one demented. He said, without pausing or turning round, "Go away."

Barney lingered for a moment. There was real power in the painting, of a peculiar kind that made him oddly uneasy.

"Go away," the man said more loudly.

"I'm going." Barney said, moving one step backwards. "Why green, up in that top corner, though? Why not blue? Or a better kind of green?" He was distressed by a lurid zig-zag of a particularly nasty shade, a yellowy, mustard-like green which drew the eye away from the rest of the picture. The man began to make a low rumbling noise like a growling dog, and the broad shoulders stiffened. Barney fled. He said to himself rebelliously, "But that colour was all wrong."

On the far side of the harbour he perched himself on a low wall, with the steep sliced rock of the headland at his back. The ill-tempered painter was invisible from there, hidden behind one of the inevitable piles of fish-boxes on the quay. Barney sharpened a new pencil with his penknife and began to doodle. A sketch of a single fishing-boat went badly, but a rough outline of the whole harbour began to turn out well, and Barney switched from pencil to an old-fashioned soft-nibbed fountain pen of which he was particularly fond. He worked fast then, pleased with the drawing, absorbed in its detail, seming the awareness-still new, this spring-that some thing of himself was going out through his fingers. It was a kind of magic Coming up for air, he paused, and held the drawing out at arm's length.

And without a sound, a large dark-sleeved hand cams from one side and seized the sketch pad. Before Barney could form his head, he heard a noise of ripping paper. Then the pad was fung back at his feet, tumbling over itself on the ground Footsteps ran. Barney leapt up with an indignant shout, and saw a man running away up the quayside, the page from the sketch pad flapping white against his dark clothes. It was the long-haired, had-tempered painter he had seen on the quay.

"Hey!" Barney yelled, furious. "Come back!"

Without a glance behind, the man swung round the end of the harbour wall. He was a long way ahead, and the harbour path sloped uphill. Barney came tearing up just in time to hear a car engine snarl into life and roar away. He whirled round the corner into the road, and ran smack into someone walking up the hill.

"Uh!" grunted the stranger, as the breath was thumped out of him. Then his voice came back. "Barney!"

It was Will Stanton. "A man," gasped Barney, staring around him. "Man in dark sweater."

"A man came running up from the harbour just ahead of you," Will said, frowning. "He jumped into a car and drove off that way." He pointed down into the village,

"That was him," Barney said. He peered resentfully at the empty road.

Will looked too, fiddling with his jacket zipper. He said with astonishing force, "Stupid of me, stupid, I knew there was something-just not properly awake, thinking of-" He shook his head as if tossing something away from it. "What did he do?"

"He's loopy, Mail" Barney could still scarcely speak for indignation. "I was sitting down there sketching, and be just came up from nowhere, ripped the drawing out of my book and belted off with it. What would any normal person do that for?"

"Did you know him?"

"No. Well, that is, I'd seen him, but only today. He was sitting down on the quay, painting, at an easel."

Will smiled broadly. A silly smile, Barney thought. "Sounds as though he thought your picture was better than his."

"Oh, come off it," Barney said impatiently.

"Well, what was his picture like?"

"Weird. Very peculiar."

"There you are, then."

"There I am not. It was weird, but it was good too, in a nasty sort of way."

"Goodness me," Will said, looking vacant. Barney glared at his round face with its thick brown fringe of hair, and felt more irritated than ever. He began trying to think of an excuse to get away.

"He had a dog in the car," Will said absent-mindedly.

"A dog?"

"Barking like anything. Didn't you hear it? And jumping about. It nearly jumped out when he got in. Hope it didn't chew up your drawing."

"I expect it did," Barney said coldly.

"Lovely dog," Will said, in the same vague, dreamy tone. "One of those long-legged Irish setters, a super reddish colour. No decent man would shut a dog like that up in a car."

Barney stood stock-still, looking at him. There was only one dog like that in Trewissick. He realised suddenly that directly across the road he could see a tall familiar grey house. At the same moment a gate at the side of the house swung open, and a man came out: a stout, elderly man with a short grey beard. leaning on a stick. Standing in the road, he put his fingers in his mouth and gave a sharp two-note whistle. Then he called, "Rufus? Rufus!"

Impulsively Barney ran towards him. "Captain Toms? You are Captain Toms, aren't you? Please, look, I know Rufus, I helped look after him last summer, and I think someone's stolen him. A man went off with him in a car, a dark man with long hair, an awful man." He paused. "Of course, if it was someone you know-"

The man with the beard looked carefully at Barney. "No," he said slowly, deliberately. "I don't know a gentleman of that description. But you do seem to know Rufus. And by that hair of yours I fancy you'd be maybe Merriman's youngest nephew. One of my tenants, last year, eh? The children with the sharp eyes."

"That's right." Barney beamed. "I'm Barnabas. Barney." But puzzled him about Captain Toms' manner: it was almost as if he were carrying on some other conversation at the same time. The old man was not even looking at him; he seemed to be gazing blankly at the surface of the water, seeing nothing, lost in his own mind.

Barney suddenly remembered Will. He turned-and saw to his astonishment that Will too was standing near him staring vacantly at nothing, expressionless, as if listening. What was the matter with everybody? "This is Will Stanton," he said loudly to Captain Toms.

The bearded face did not change expression. "Yes," said Captain Toms gently. Then he shook his head, and seemed to wake up. "A dark man, you said?"

"He was a painter. Very bad-tempered. I don't know who he was or anything. But Will saw him going off with a dog who sounded just like Rufus-and just outside your door-"

"I will make enquiries," Captain Toms said reassuringly. "But come in, come in, both of you. You shall show your friend the Grey House, Barnabas. I must find my key... I was busy in the garden...." He felt in his pockets, patting at his jacket ineffectually with the arm not leaning on the stick. Then they were at the front door.

"The door's open!" Will said sharply. His voice was crisp, very different from his inane babbling of a few moments before, and Barney blinked.

Captain Toms pushed the half-open door with his stick, and stumped inside. "That's how the fellow got Rufus out. Opened the front door while I was round the back... I still can't find that key." He began fumbling in his pockets again.

Following him in, Barney felt something rustle at his feet; he bent, and picked up a sheet of white paper. "You didn't pick up your-" He stopped abruptly. The note was very short, and in large letters. He could not help taking it in at a glance. He held it out to the captain, but it was Will, this strange brisk Will, who took the paper, and stood staring at it with the old man, the two heads close, young and old, brown and grey.

The note was made of large black capital letters cut from a newspaper and stuck very neatly together on the sheet. It said, "IF YOU WANT YOUR DOG BACK ALIVE, KEEP AWAY FROM THE GREENWITCH."

to be continued.....