"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 house, Tom runs away, hoping to live with his uncle. In his depiction of Tom"s initiation into Uncle Stephen"s mystic creed, his illicit love for the poacher Jim Deverell, and his adventures with Philip, a mysterious boy with a strange and fantastic connection to Uncle Stephen"s past and Tom"s future, Forrest Reid"s artistic vision finds its fullest expression. The first in...