Explore "The Will and the Way" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The simile ending the last chapter would seem, on the face of it, a somewhat inverted one, considering the relative bulks of the stoat and the poor bunny it attacks, which may be as one to five or six. These two men were, on the contrary, fairly of a size, though, physically, there was no comparison between them. Practical hard work had toughened the one; sedentary and self-indulgent ways had softened the other. Nor does the moral analogy hold; for, if Le Strang was tenacious of purpose, Redding was, in that respect, not so much as an inch or two behind him.
If it came to a struggle between them--for which, it must be confessed, there seemed at present no adequate grounds--it would be just a question of pull devil pull baker. But what excuse could offer for that test of strength? Well, Le Strang, if it is to be presumed that he foresaw one, kept his reasons characteristically to himself. Not until near the end did the other come fully to realise the persistence and relentlessness of the enemy who had been following him down to his doom, with scarcely a movement in the grasses or the crackle of a dead leaf to betray him.