And then events crowded too thick and fast for him to recognize any one emotion in particular from all the fire of them passing so swiftly in and out among his hopelessly disorganized thoughts.  Terror flashed, but with it flashed also wonder and delight—­the audacity of unreflecting courage—­and more—­even a breathless worship of the powers, knowledge and forces that lifted for him in that little bedroom the vast Transparency that hides from men the Unknown.

It is soon told.  For a moment there was silence, and then he knew that the invader had effected an entrance.  There was barely time to marvel at the snake-like thinness of the living creature that could avail itself of so narrow a space, when to his amazement he heard the quick patter of feet across the space of boarded flooring next the wall, and then the silence that muffled them as they reached the carpet proper.

Almost at the same second something leaped upon his bed, and there shot swiftly across him a living thing with light, firm tread—­a creature, so far as he could form any judgment at all, about the size of a rabbit or a cat.  He felt the feet pushing through sheets and blankets upon his body.  They were little feet; how many, at that stage, he could not guess.  Then he heard the thud as it dropped to the floor upon the other side.

The panic terror that in the dark it would run upon his bare exposed face thus passed; and in that moment of intense relief Spinrobin gripped his soul, so to speak, with both hands and made the effort of his life.  Whatever happened now he must have a light, be it only the light of a single miserable candle.  In that moment he felt that he would have sacrificed all his hopes of the hereafter to have turned on a flood of searching and brilliant sunshine into every corner of the room—­instantaneously.  The thought that the creature might jump again upon the bed and touch him before he could see, gave him energy to act.

With dashes of terror shooting through him like spears of ice, he grabbed the matchbox, and after a frenzied entanglement again with sheets and pillow-case, succeeded in breaking four matches in quick succession.  They cracked, it seemed to him, like pistol shots, till he half expected that this creature, waiting there in the darkness, must leap out in the direction of the sound to attack him.  The fifth lit, and a moment later the candle was burning dimly, but with its usual exasperating leisure and delay.  As the flare died down, then gradually rose again, he fairly swallowed the room with a single look, wishing there were eyes all over his body.  It was a very faint light.  At first he saw nothing, heard nothing—­nothing alive, that is.

“I must act!  I must do something—­at once!” he remembered thinking.  For, to wait meant to leave the choice and moment of attack to this other....

Cautiously, and very slowly, therefore, he wriggled to the edge of the bed and slid over, searching with his feet for slippers, but finding none, yet not daring to lower his eyes to look; then stood upright with a sudden rush, shading the candle from his eyes with one hand and peering over it.