Tristan ate some of his salmon toast while he listened to Douglas' story. "I don't envy you for having spent time at the front," he said. He had heard about the Crimean War from his parents. Terrible conditions. And then in his own lifetime, he had followed the fighting in South Africa and its cost. He was thankful to be safely home.

"Did you ever go hunting after that? That sounds like the type of experience that would put fright in a boy for a long time." He had encountered a wild boar on a walk in the wild, but it had been from a distance and the creature had run away.