Desmond could never afterward remember the details of the crowded moments
that followed. There were cries all around him: behind, the strident
voice of Mr. Toley was cheering his men to repel the assault at the back
of the house: at his side Bulger was bellowing like a bull of Bashan. But
all this was confused noise to him, for his attention was wholly occupied
with his old enemy. His first lunge at Diggle was neatly parried, and the
two, oblivious of all that was happening around them, looked full into
each other's eyes, read grim determination there, and fought with a cold
fury that meant death to the first that gave an opening to his opponent's
sword.
If motive counted, if the right cause could always win, the issue
admitted of no doubt. Desmond had a heavy score to pay off. From the time
when he had met Diggle in the street at Market Drayton to his last
encounter with him at the Battle of the Carts, he had been the mark of
his enmity, malice, spite, trickery. But Desmond thought less of his own
wrongs than of the sorrow of his friend, Mr. Merriman, and the harrowing
wretchedness which must have been the lot of the ladies while they were
in Diggle's power. The man had brought misery into so many lives that it
would be a good deed if, in the fortune of war, Desmond's sword could rid
the world of him.
And Diggle, on his side, was nerved by the power of hate. Baseless as
were his suspicions of Desmond's friendship with Sir Willoughby Stokes,
he felt that this boy was an obstacle.
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