Puffin Book Edition From the back cover of this book: “Elizabeth Gray has re-created, with superb effect, a period of English history glowing with life and color...this absorbing story will take its place among the finest historical stories for children.” ~ *Horn Book* Eleven-year-old Adam loved to travel through the open roads of thirteenth-century England with his father, a wandering minstrel, and his red spaniel, Nick. But when his father suddenly disappears and Nick is stolen, Adam finds himself alone searching the same roads filled with rich merchants,pilgrims with cockleshells upon their hats, farming folk driving pigs to the fair, minstrels and priests, saints and thieves~and somewhere in the crowd his father and his dog.