of the air that rained in upon him.... Yes, the room had
indeed changed, actually changed ... but before he could decide where the
difference lay the candle died down to a mere spark, waiting for the wick
to absorb the grease. It seemed like half an hour before the yellow
tongue grew again, so that he finally saw clearly.

But--saw what? Saw that the room had horribly altered while he slept,
yes! But how altered? What in the name of all the world's deities was the
matter with it? The torrent of sound, now growing louder and louder, so
confused him at first, and the dancing patchwork of light and shadow the
candle threw so increased his bewilderment, that for some minutes he
sought in vain to steady his mind to the point of accurate observation.

"God of my Fathers!" cried Spinrobin at last under his breath, and hardly
knowing what he said, "if it's not moving!"

For this, indeed, was what he saw while the candle flame burned steadily
upon a room that was no longer quite recognizable.

At first, with the natural exaggeration due to shock, he thought the
whole room moved, but as his powers of sight came with time to report
more truly, he perceived that this was only true of certain things in it.
It was not the ceiling that poured down in fluid form to meet a floor
ever gliding and shifting forward into outlandish proportions, but it was
certain objects--one here, another there--midway between the two that,
having assumed new and unaccustomed outlines, lent to the rest of the
chamber a general appearance of movement and an entirely altered
expression. And these objects, he perceived, holding tightly to the
bedclothes with both hands as he stared, were two: the dark,
old-fashioned cupboard on his left, and the plush curtains that draped
the window on his right. He himself, and the bed and the rest of the
furniture were stationary. The room as a whole stood still, while these
two common and familiar articles of household furnishing took on a form
and an expression utterly foreign to what he had always known as a
cupboard and a curtain. This outline, this expression, moreover, if not
actually sinister, was grotesque to the verge of the sinister: monstrous.

The difficulty of making any accurate observation at all was further
increased by the perplexity of having to observe two objects, not even on
the same side of the room. Their outlines, however, Spinrobin claims,
altered very slowly, wavering like the distorted reflect