THE SUBSTANCE OF OUR SHADOW. 



79 



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 fatmis, 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 cor- 

 respondence 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. 



mm -\ 



irt'l 



