CHAPTER XXV.
THE AMBUSCADE.
Night came, and with it all black thoughts.

Not that they were black at once, any more than darkness leaps upon the back of noon, without the intervening cloak of twilight.

Oh dear, no! Simon's thoughts accommodated themselves fitly to the time of day.

They had been, for him, at early morning, pretty middling white, that is whity-brown; thence they passed, with the passing hour kindly, through the shades of burnt sienna, raw umber, and bistre; until, just as we may notice in the case of marking-ink; that which, five minutes ago, was as water only delicately dirtied, has become a fixed and indelible black.
Simon was resolved upon the spoil, come what might; although his waking sensations of buoyancy, his noon-day cogitations of a calmer kind, and his even-tide determined scheming, had now given way to a nervous and unpleasant trepidation.

So he poured spirits down to keep his spirits up.