friends, that cloud has within it all the storms,
cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes and tornadoes necessary to destroy you
and yours. Unless you repent of your pride and sloth, Judgment will
surely come upon you. The Lord has taken a simple and despised weed and
caused it to multiply in defiance of all your puny powers and efforts. O
my friends, do not fight this grass, but cherish it; do not allow it to
be cut down for it is full of significance for you. Call off all your
minions and repent, lest if the holy messenger be injured a more
terrible one is sent. But now, my friends, I see my time is up; please
send your contributions so urgently needed to carry on the Divine Work
to Brother Paul care of the station to which you are listening."

"That's one way of looking at it," said Gootes. "Adios amigos."

He went down the stairs at an even more breakneck pace than he had come
up. Almost in front of the apartmenthouse door we nearly collided with
two officers in angry dispute.

"You mean to tell me, Captain, that not one of the urgent orders to
suspend operations came through to you?"

"Colonel, I havent seen a thing against the project except some fool
articles in a newspaper."

Suddenly I remembered where I'd seen the name Eltwiss. It was on the
financial page, not far away from the elusive quotation on Consolidated
Pemmican and Allied Concentrates for which I'd been idly searching.
"Eltwiss Explosives Cut Melon." Funny how things come back to you as
soon as you put them out of your mind.

Miss Francis, who had followed us down was busy collecting some of the
stolons which were still floating lazily downward.

_18._ An illiterate patchwork of lifeless and uninteresting scribbling
appeared under my byline day after day in the _Intelligencer_. Not a
word, not a thought of my own was left. I was not restrained from
protest by the absurd threats of Le ffacase, but prudence dictated not
throwing away dirty water before I got clean, and the money from the
paper, while negligible of course, yet provided my most pressing needs.

As I was being paid for my name while my talents went to waste, I was
free to go anywhere I pleased, but I had little desire to leave the
vicinity of the grass. It exerted upon me, more understandably, the same
fascination as on the merely curious.

But I was not permitted unmolested access to the phenomenon with which I
was so closely concerned. An officious young guardsman warned me away
brus