‘Ned up and away. Lighthearted and unsuspicious as ever. He laughed when I cautioned him, and said he was as good a man as Neville Landless any day. I told him that might be, but he was not as bad a man. He continued to make light of it, but I travelled with him as far as I could, and left him most unwillingly. I am unable to shake off these dark intangible presentiments of evil—if feelings founded upon staring facts are to be so called.’ ”
“Again and again,” said Jasper, in conclusion, twirling the leaves of the book before putting it by, “I have relapsed into these moods, as other entries show. But I have now your assurance at my back, and shall put it in my book, and make it an antidote to my black humours.
“Such an antidote, I hope,” returned Mr. Crisparkle, “as will induce you before long to consign the black humours to the flames. I ought to be the last to find any fault with