difficult
to follow on the dark carpet, and the doctor himself so weary and taken
by surprise--that he found it almost impossible to observe accurately,
or to recall afterwards precisely what it was he had seen or in what
order the incidents had taken place. He never could understand what
defect of vision on his part made it seem as though the cat had
duplicated itself at first, and then increased indefinitely, so that
there were at least a dozen of them darting silently about the floor,
leaping softly on to chairs and tables, passing like shadows from the
open door to the end of the room, all black as sin, with brilliant green
eyes flashing fire in all directions. It was like the reflections from a
score of mirrors placed round the walls at different angles. Nor could
he make out at the time why the size of the room seemed to have altered,
grown much larger, and why it extended away behind him where ordinarily
the wall should have been. The snarling of the enraged and terrified
collie sounded sometimes so far away; the ceiling seemed to have raised
itself so much higher than before, and much of the furniture had changed
in appearance and shifted marvellously.

It was all so confused and confusing, as though the little room he knew
had become merged and transformed into the dimensions of quite another
chamber, that came to him, with its host of cats and its strange
distances, in a sort of vision.

But these changes came about a little later, and at a time when his
attention was so concentrated upon the proceedings of Smoke and the
collie, that he only observed them, as it were, subconsciously. And the
excitement, the flickering candlelight, the distress he felt for the
collie, and the distorting atmosphere of fog were the poorest possible
allies to careful observation.

At first he was only aware that the dog was repeating his short
dangerous bark from time to time, snapping viciously at the empty air, a
foot or so from the ground. Once, indeed, he sprang upwards and
forwards, working furiously with teeth and paws, and with a noise like
wolves fighting, but only to dash back the next minute against the wall
behind him. Then, after lying still for a bit, he rose to a crouching
position as though to spring again, snarling horribly and making short
half-circles with lowered head. And Smoke all the while meowed piteously
by the window as though trying to draw the attack upon himself.

Then it was that the rush of the wh