The spring on the mountain - Judy Allen

Peter, Michael and Emma are strangers, each despatched by their parents for a week's holiday with the Myers in their cottage at the foot of a Welsh mountain. Coincidence? Or has the strange neighbour, Mrs White, somehow lured them to enact an awesome quest?

They are an uneasy trio, uncomfortable in their forced alliance, and they face their circumstances in very different ways - Mrs Myers anxious 'mothering', the enigmatic Mrs White, and the swirling sense of fear that seems trapped in the lane running past her house, her stories of Arthur's Way, the old straight track shrouded in legend that leads straight to the peak of the mountain, and her obsession with diverting the spring at the top. There are peculiar visitors and strange warnings, yet the children feel compelled to set off up Arthur's Way at the most dangerous time of year. What they discover, about unseen forces on earth, about the price of disturbing nature, about themselves, leads to a gripping climax in a spell-binding tale.

First published in 1973 by Jonathan Cape Ltd.