forefathers knew when the
inexplicable horror of a tidal wave or an eclipse of the sun overwhelmed
them with the threatened alteration of their entire known universe.

The sleeping figure in that big four-poster moved a little as the tide of
sound played upon it, fidgeting this way and that. The human ball
uncoiled, lengthened, straightened out. The head, half hidden by folds of
sheet and pillowcase, emerged.

Spinrobin unfolded, then opened his eyes and stared about him,
bewildered, in the darkness.

"Who's there? Is that you--anybody?" he asked in a whisper, the confusion
of sleep still about him.

His voice seemed dead and smothered, as though the other sound
overwhelmed it. The same instant, more widely awake, he realized that his
bedroom was _humming_.

"What's that? What's the matter?" he whispered again, wondering uneasily
at the noise.

There was no answer. The vague dread transferred itself adroitly from his
dream-consciousness to his now thoroughly awakened mind. It began to dawn
upon him that something was wrong. He noticed that the fire was out, and
the room dark and heavy. He realized dimly the passage of time--a
considerable interval of time--and that he must have been asleep several
hours. Where was he? _Who_ was he? What, in the name of mystery and
night, had been going on during the interval? He began to shake all
over--feverishly. Whence came this noise that made everything in the
darkness tremble?

As he fumbled hurriedly for the matchbox, his fingers caught in the folds
of pillowcase and sheet, and he struggled violently to get them clear
again. It was while doing this that the impression first reached him that
the room was no longer quite the same. It had changed while he slept.
Even in the darkness he felt this, and shuddering pulled the blankets
over his head and shoulders, for this idea of the changed room plucked at
the center of his heart, where terror lay waiting to leap out upon him.

After what seemed five minutes he found the matchbox and struck a light,
and all the time the torrent of sound poured about his ears with such an
effect of bewilderment that he hardly realized what he was doing. A
strange terror poured into him that _he_ would change with the room. At
length the match flared, and while he lit the candle with shaking
fingers, he looked wildly, quickly about him. At once the sounds rushed
upon him from all directions, burying him, so to speak, beneath vehement
vibrations