in my head.

My pipe went out. I pulled out my pouch and was filling it afresh when
a puff of wind came down the chimney and blew a cloud of blue smoke out
into the room.

The smoke curled up and spread itself over the face of the mirror
confronting me. I followed it lazily with my eyes. Then suddenly I
bent forward, staring up. Something very curious was happening to the
glass.



II.


WHAT I SAW IN THE MIRROR.

The smoke that had dimmed the mirror's face for a moment was rolling off
its surface and upwards to the ceiling. But some of it still lingered
in filmy, slowly revolving eddies. The glass itself, too, was stirring
beneath this film and running across its breadth in horizontal waves
which broke themselves silently, one after another, against the dark
frame, while the circles of smoke kept widening, as the ripples widen
when a stone is tossed into still water.

I rubbed my eyes. The motion on the mirror's surface was quickening
perceptibly, while the glass itself was steadily becoming more opaque,
the film deepening to a milky colour and lying over the surface in heavy
folds. I was about to start up and touch the glass with my hand, when