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better pop in on our way home and see if she’s all right.Sounds off her rocker to me – and I don’t think I can let you have more than just one tin of coke, Heather.”
    Heather took a packet of cupcakes as well as the coke and pelted to the tower, clutching the bag to her. She was very glad to find that Robert was still there, wistfully watching the sun march through a tower of cloud, down towards the hills. He smiled at Heather when she came panting to the top of the stairs, and nodded out towards the view.
    “Don’t tell me,” he said. “None of this is Castlemaine land any longer. Right?”

    “Only the house is now,” Heather said. She had not any breath to say more.
    Robert spread his hand out towards the green landscape. Heather found she had stopped evenbeing able to pant. She thought she really might have a heart attack. “In my time,” Robert said, “everything a man could see from the top of this tower was Castlemaine land.” He took his hand back, sadly. “If I made it mine, it wouldn’t last,” he said. “Where is the food you promised?”
    “Here,” gasped Heather. She was breathless with relief now.
    Robert smiled quite heartily. “My hunger is three hundred and fifty years old. I feel like an empty rain barrel,” he said.
    Heather had to leave as soon as she had given him the bag of food, for fear of getting locked up in the old castle when Dad did his rounds with the keys. She told herself that this would mean that Robert was safely locked up in the tower, where there was no one to turn into sheep or dogs, at least until tomorrow morning. The trouble was, she did not believe this. She was fairly sure Robert could easily burst the locked doors open if he wanted to. Or, if he did decide to stay in the tower, he could probably work any magic he wanted to from there. Heather just had to hope he would decide to stay there quietly until she had spoken to Dad. He seemed to trust her to do that. And this was another thing that made Heather uncomfortable, because she was still not sure what she was going to say to Dad.
    At the moment, however, it was Mum she wanted to see. It took Heather a while to track Mum down. She found her, at last, in the small kitchen, starting to get supper ready. Heather at once began to help, without even being asked, so that she could go on keeping an eye on Mum.

    Mum seemed all right, but she kept darting alarmed looks at the shepherd’s crook, which was propped up in a corner. From time to time she said, in a puzzled way, “It’s too early in the season to be overworked. I wonder if I’m going down with something.”
    Each time Heather said, quickly and firmly, “Of course not. There’s nothing wrong with you at all.”
    “You
are
being kind,” Mum said at last. “How grown-up and considerate you’re getting, Heather.”
    Heather found her face getting hot again. It was Robert who was making her feel that way. When she thought about him, she almost felt like a mother herself – a mother with the kind of naughty small boy who pulls down piles of food in the supermarket and the mother has to pay for it. “The potatoes are nearly done,” she said, to take her mind off it. “How long is supper going to be? I can hardly wait.”
    This was true. After just one sandwich for lunch, Heather was starving. Strawberries do not fill a person up.
    “Not long now,” Mum said. “I like suppertime, too. It’s the only time of day when we can be a proper family. You can go and jangle the bell for Dad, while I dish the meat up.”
    When supper was on the table, Heather fell on it as if she was the one who had not eaten for three hundred and fifty years. But she knew she had to talk to Dad about Robert. So, as soon as she felt a little less empty, she started the talk by saying, “Dad, you know all the history of Castlemaine, don’t you?”
    “I’ve read up a fair bit,” Dad admitted. “Why?”

    “Have you read about anyone called Robert Toller?” Heather