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    Something odd is taking place in the graveyard. More of that in my next. Fancy having a proper address for you! Lambeth Palace, ho ho ho!
    (Do you remember old Wiggonholt? I wonder what ever became of him? And of Cousin Rodney?)
    You say that you are sending two investigators northward. You had better give me more information about them or they are likely to run into trouble
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    Cousinly greetings
,
M
    Dido and the Woodlouse sat in a first-class compartment of a train that was making its way over the heights of Willoughby Wold.
    Dido looked at the Woodlouse with huge satisfaction. His real name was not the Woodlouse but Piers Ivanhoe le Guichet Crackenthorpe. But he had been called Woodlouse when she first met him because of his habit of curling up in moments of danger, and she had become fond of the name. It seemed to suit him. He was a thin, pale, dark-haired boy somewhere in his early teens. He wore green-tinted glasses. He was nothing like so thin and pale as he had been when Dido first met him at a school run by criminals and werewolves, where he had been starved and ill-treated.
    Now, for some months, he had been the guest of the Green family at Willoughby Chase, where two kind girls, Bonnie and Sylvia, and their benevolent parents, Sir Willoughby and Lady Green, had fed and tended and encouraged him, until he was now as active and cheerful as any other boy his age.
    “Woodlouse,” said Dido, “you’re a credit to those Greens. I only wish we could a stayed longer. They seemed a right decent pair of gals, that Bonnie and Sylvia. A few more days of crossbow practice and I reckon you’d be all set to win the county championship.”
    “Well, they did say to come back when we’d finished our errand in the North Country. Bonnie promised that she’d teach me singlestick and quarterstaff and how to tilt at the quintain. And Sylvia was going to teach me to skate. Sir Willoughby promised he’d write to my pater, who’s the British ambassador in New Galloway, the capital of Hy Brasil, to tell him that I was alive and bobbish. I’d really like to go out and visit the pater and mater, but it’s a three-month trip. And they might just be coming back.”
    Piers sighed and looked out at the wild and desolate moorland country through which the train was passing.
    “How long before we get to Caledonia?”
    “Four hours—maybe five. Depends a bit, Sir Willoughby said, on whether we meet any highwaymen along the way. Railwaymen they call them in these parts. Then we get to Roman Wall. There’s a train station, but we don’t get out. We go on, through a lot of mountains, and come to a big lake, what they call a loch. There’s been a new rail bridge built across it. Just as well, Sir Willoughby said, as there’s a monster living in or near the loch, the Loch Grieve Monster, what used to nobble a lot of folks off the ferry, afore the bridge was built. And there are Hobyahs too. The town we’re going to, Clatteringshaws, is on the north side of the loch.”
    “Is that where Father Sam’s cousin lives?”
    “I’m not sure,” Dido admitted. “Father Sam didn’t seem to know. But that’s the town she’s witch of.”
    “Seems mighty odd—for an Archbishop’s cousin to be a witch. I never met a witch, did you, Dido?”
    “Well,” said Dido, “when I was in New Cumbria, that’s next to Hy Brasil, there were some mighty rummy old gals there. If they weren’t witches, they was the next best thing. One of ’em turned into an owl and flew about at night. And she got shot and turned back into herself again. But dead.”
    “Shot when she was an owl?”
    “Yup. And the Queen of that country was a right spooky old crumpet what had been waiting umpty hundred years for her hubby to come back; and to keep herself going all that time she ate a lot of gals’ bones.… I reckon you could call her a witch.”
    Piers looked thoughtful.
    “Monsters, Hobyahs, witches—it sounds like an odd spot we’re heading for.