 Left in charge of the family estates, he uses his freedom to indulge his love of field sports, focusing especially on wildfowl-shooting on a nearby peat bog.There is an extended chapter narrating a magnificent fox hunt, whose trophy, the brush, forms the focus of a poignant moment in the coda, in the narrator's old age.When he discovers that the existence of the bog is threatened by an industrial peat-cutting syndicate he finds no effective ally except an old woman who believes herself to be a "wise woman", or witch.