‘Your lurcher. She is a hunting dog, is she not? A hare courser?’

‘Oh, well, she was supposed to be. She wasn’t any good at it, apparently.’

‘Probably just as well. There are few enough hares left as it is. In any case, she has the look.’

‘She does seem to like lounging about in front of fires like something out of an old oil painting. You know the type, expensive rugs, stag’s head on the wall, hounds sprawled in the warmest place.’

‘On such a chilly day, and after brisk exercise? I cannot fault her thinking.’

The reassuringly sensible company the professor offers has such a restorative effect on Tilda that she all but forgets about the grandfather clock until she is standing next to it in the hallway of the Old School House. She sees that it is working again, and hurries on into the sitting room in the hope that she can escape causing the thing to break down. Professor Williams strikes a long match and sets it to the neatly twisted paper in the grate, and soon the sticks and coals have caught. He leaves Tilda examining the old map that appears to have a permanent home on his desk, and goes to make tea. Thistle stretches out on the hearth rug with a contented sigh. Tilda studies the details offered by the faded, beautifully drawn representation of the lake and its surroundings. The cartographer’s date stamp says 1908, which explains the absence of many of the buildings she is familiar with, particularly on the northern, busy side of the lake, but for the most part things are unchanged. She finds St. Cynog’s church again straightaway, with the Old School House next to it, and the Vicarage a little ways off, all set safely back from the shoreline. The crannog is marked, but only as an uninhabited island. Farther back, on the farside, various constructions in the village of Llangors itself stand out—another church, two inns, a lowland farm and a scattering of houses. Tilda studies the map closely without knowing what it is she is hoping to find or expecting to see.

A normal map of a normal place. A bit too recent for ‘Here be dragons.’