Book excerpt: In the 1890s, a motherless teenager whose father has been forced to flee the country is 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. When he discovers 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...a witch!