THE SUBSTANCE OF OUR SHADOW. 



Now, ye carpers and cavillers at our story, we assure you, 

 that however far we may indulge ourselves by flights into the 

 realms of fancy, we never knowingly play towards you the part 

 of an ignis fatuus, misleading you by false allusions into the 

 swamps of error regarding the realities of nature. 



Supposing the mole-cricket to be really luminous, we 

 shall find in its location, its mode of flight, its coat of armour 

 -above all, in its mail-clad hands of human form a close 

 correspondence with the wandering " corpse light ' of our 

 Tim, who, with the enlargement and heightening furnished by 

 his excited mind, might not very unnaturally have mistaken a 

 mole-cricket for the apparition of a dwarfish knight. 



(Tlii- s. 



