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'What is it?' she asked irritably as she pulled the door open. She gave a gasp as two figures fell through into the hall. She closed the door and turned round, but both had already gone into the living room. She hurried after them.

'Doctor, Ace, what's going on? I ... what's happened to your clothes?' Concern tinged her voice.

Neither were dressed as they had been when they had left that morning. Their clothes had been replaced by what appeared to be old potato sacks secured around their waists by thin, tatty pieces of leather. The Doctor was wearing knee-high calfskin boots, stained with mud and blades of grass, and Ace's feet were bare.

Ace had fallen in front of the fire and was now huddling up close to it while the Doctor leant against the wall by the window. He gave an anxious look outside. His breath was shallow and quick and his arms trembled.

'What's happened to you? You need something warm in you. I'll be back in a moment.' She hurried through to the kitchen, quickly emptied a tin of soup into a saucepan and put it on the hot plate of the Aga. She went to the back door and called up to the shed.

'Hugh! Hugh! Come here, quickly. It's the Doctor and Ace, something's happened to them.'

Hugh appeared at the door of the shed. 'What's that? Where are they?'

'In here, they've just turned up now. Come quickly, love, there's something the matter with them.'

'Right ho.' He hurried down and followed her inside.

'Something's happened to their clothes, and they wouldn’t say anything to me. Go and look, they're in the front room.’

Hugh went through and Janet gave the soup a couple of stirs. Hugh came back in. 'I think we'd better put them to bed and get the doctor in to see them. '

'I'll just give them this soup then.' She poured it into two mugs and carried them into the living room.

Ace was curled up now, her hands hiding her head. The way she lay by the fire reminded Janet of something.

'Hugh, have you seen Badger anywhere?' she asked her husband as she knelt at Ace's side. 'Here you are love, try and drink this.' Ace took the cup reluctantly and then clutched it to herself, spilling the hot liquid on to her front. 'Careful, love, careful' Janet chided softly.

'Come and sit down and drink this,' Hugh told the Doctor. He guided the Doctor to a chair, but could not persuade him to drink.

Janet and Hugh stood in the doorway and watched the two shivering figures.

'What on earth do you think can have happened to them?’ Janet wondered.

Hugh looked at them. 'Their minds seem to be in retreat from something.' he said. 'I'm going to call young Doctor Snape. Why don't you put them into bed? Try to keep them warm.

Ace shivered.

With a hefty blow, David hammered the last peg home and climbed inside the tent.

‘Snug as a bug,’ he announced.

Jack crawled in. 'Eeurgh!' he said. 'Not .as snug as these bugs.' Hundreds of small black bodies, casualties of suffocation, littered the walls and floor of the tent.

‘Mosquitoes ' David commented, scraping a tiny corpse off the canvas, 'the bane of every camper.

They bite you when you sleep and turn your tent into a morgue when you re awake. So much for insect repellent.'

They had wandered along the Gwydyr road looking for a gate but, despite a couple of promising starts, had been unable to come up with anywhere that looked like a potential source of centaurs. One of the particularly unsuccessful missions through a stone gateway had led them along two miles of dirt track to a tiny cottage inhabited by an old woman who chased them away with a broom handle and then, from a distance, swore at them in Welsh.

When the sky had begun to grow dark, they had turned back towards Llanfer Ceiriog, still determined to find the gateway, and had decided to pitch their tent in a field for the night: They had always been told that they should ask permission if they were going to camp in a field, but it was shielded from the road by a screen of trees and there didn't appear to be a farm in sight, so they didn't bother.