e of my fortunes.

The street was closed off by a road barrier quite some distance away and
tightly parked cars testified to the attraction of the expanding grass.
Scorning these idle sightseers, I pushed and shoved my way forward to
what had now become the focus of all my interests.

The Dinkmans had lived in a city block, an urban entity. It was no
pretentious group of houses, nor was it a repetitive design out of some
subdividing contractor's greedy mind. Moderatesized, mediumpriced,
middleclass bungalows; these were the homes of the Dinkmans and their
neighbors; a sample from a pattern which varied but was basically the
same here and in Oakland, Seattle and St. Louis; in Chicago,
Philadelphia, Boston and Cleveland.

But now I looked upon no city scene, no picture built upon the
substantial foundation of daddy at the office all day, fixing a leaky
faucet of an evening, painting the woodwork during his summer vacation;
or mom, after a pleasant afternoon with the girls, unstintedly opening
cans for supper and harassedly watching the cleaning woman who came in
once a week. An alien presence, a rude fist through the canvas negated
the convention that this was a picture of reality. A coneshaped hill
rose to a blurred point, marking the burialplace of the Dinkman house.
It was a child's drawing of a coneshaped hill, done in green crayon; too
symmetrical, too evenly and heavily green to be a spontaneous product of
nature; man's unimaginative hand was apparent in its composition.

The sides of the cone flowed past the doors and windows of the adjacent
houses, blocking them as it had previously blocked the Dinkmans', but
their inhabitants, forewarned, had gone. More than mere desertion was
implied in their going; there was an implicit surrender, abandonment to
the invader. The base of the cone, accepting capitulation and still
aggressive, had reached to the lawns beyond, warning these householders
too to be ready for flight; over backfences to dwellings fronting
another street, and establishing itself firmly over the concrete
pavement before the Dinkmans' door.

I would be suppressing part of the truth if I did not admit that for the
smallest moment some perverted pride made me cherish this hill as my
work, my creation. But for me it would not have existed. I had done
something notable, I had caused a stir; it was the same kind of
sensation, I imagine, which makes criminals boast of their crimes.

I quickly dismissed th