Tobias

Julia and her brothers didn't know much about their French ancestor, but their cousin Clarissa, with whom they always spent their holidays, had a book which had belonged to the ancestor's uncle, who was an alchemist, and a portrait of him with his cat and his servant, Tobias Broome. On that particular holiday, Julia felt at once that something was wrong when Clarissa was not there to meet them at the station. Sure enough, she had scalded her foot and been taken to hospital. The children were on their own, and it was not long before the house was invaded by two strangers, the terrifying Miss Fiddler, with her strange demand to see the alchemist's book, and Tobias, whom Antony and Julia soon came to think of as a friend, but whose life story bewilderingly began in the seventeenth century.