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'Come now,.' he said. 'Is your existence really so angelic, Edgar?' He placed such a disapproving emphasis on the word 'angelic' that I was tempted to invent some bad behaviour simply to please him. Uncle saw my struggles.

'Never mind, lad. There is no shame in being a good boy,.' he said with very little conviction.

'No, Uncle,.' I said, having never for one moment ever thought that there could be.

'Perhaps you would like to hear a cautionary tale about a boy whose behaviour was not quite so commendable as your own, Edgar,.' said Uncle Montague finally.

'Yes, Uncle. I would like that.'

'Excellent.' He flexed his long bony fingers, his face becoming a mask of seriousness once more. 'Excellent . . .'

It was a crisp, bright October morning. Yellow and brown leaves were slowly falling through the chill air. Frost shimmered in the shadows.

A boy called Simon Hawkins leaned on the cold damp wall, staring at the old woman in the garden beyond. Though Simon could see her, she could not see him, for Old Mother Tallow was blind.

The children in the village called Old Mother Tallow a witch and dared each other to knock on her door. None had even mustered the nerve to enter her garden. On Halloween they threw eggs at her house and ran away. Simon had wandered there in a moment of boredom to see if blind Old Mother Tallow was up to anything exciting. It seemed unlikely.

She wore a grey coat with a thick shawl over that. A heavy dress fell all the way to her feet, the edge of which was soaking up the dampness from the grass. She wore black boots and fingerless gloves. She had a woollen bonnet on her head and her face was red with the cold.

The old woman was examining one of four old apple trees in front of the house. Simon studied her with the same sort of fascination he would were she a bee or an ant going about its business.

She was running her sinewy fingers over the trunk and branches with one hand while opening and closing a pair of secateurs with the other. She reached a point at the end of one branch and raised the secateurs, closing the blades round a twig and cutting into it. As she snipped through it a flock of redwings took flight from a nearby holly tree.

'Who's there?' she said suddenly, making Simon jump. Her voice was low and whispered and yet it seemed to crack like a whip in the silence of the garden. Simon did not answer.

'Come,.' she said, without looking round. 'I may be blind, but I'm not deaf - or stupid. If you have come to frighten an old woman, then shame on you.'

'My name is . . . Martin,.' said Simon.

'Martin, is it?' said the old woman with what sounded to Simon like doubt in her voice. But how could it be doubt? How could she know any different? 'And what do you want, Martin?'

'What are you doing?' he said.

'Pruning,.' said the old woman. 'I am pruning my apple trees. If I did not prune them they would not give me such delicious apples. They would waste all that energy growing new branches and leaves. They need to be tamed.' As she said the word 'tamed', the secateurs yawned open and quickly snapped shut.

'Now I ask you again: what do you want?'

'Nothing,.' he said defensively.

'Nothing, is it?' she said. 'I know you children and your greedy clutching little fingers.' Simon was a little taken aback by the sudden venom in the old woman's voice.

'I'm not doing anything,.' he said.

'Then go away.'

Simon did not move.

'Go away,.' she said again.

'Why should I?' said Simon. 'I'm not doing any harm. I'm not even in your garden. I'm not scared of you.' It was a brave boast that was not helped by the tremble in his voice.

The old woman turned and began to walk towards him. Her eyes were as frosted as the grass on which she trod. There was something so horrible about the gaze of those clouded marble-like eyes that Simon found he could not bear it. He pushed himself off the wall and ran down the hill back to the village, laughing nervously to himself when he was well clear.

Simon was bored. He and his mother had recently