to Phoenix, and so the matter was necessarily postponed. Moreover, on
mature reflection, he decided that there was nothing much to
investigate. The days went by, the matter slipped his mind, and he had
almost forgotten the incident.

It was an Indian who first brought news of the jungle to Oracle. His
name was John Redpath and he wasn't the average person's idea of an
Indian at all. He wore store clothes and a wide-brimmed hat, and spoke
English with the colloquial ease of one whose native language it was.
It was ten o'clock in the morning, the hour when people gathered at the
local store and post-office to gossip and get their mail, when he came
driving into town in his Ford, his terrified wife and three children
crowded into the back seat.

"What's the matter, John?" asked Silby, the constable.

"Matter?" said Redpath. "I'll tell you what's the matter."

He held the attention of the crowd which now began flocking around him.
"You know me, Silby; I'm not easily frightened; but what's happened at
my place has me scared stiff."

He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.

"When we went to bed last night, everything looked as usual; but this
morning...."

He paused.

"Something over night had grown up in my pasture. Don't ask me what it
is. The whole hillside was filled with it. I went to the pasture to
milk my goats--that's some distance from the house and over a rise; you
know how rugged my land is--and there was the stuff, acres of it,
twenty, thirty feet tall, like--like nothing I had ever seen before.
And Silby"--his voice was suddenly low--"I could see it growing."

At this remarkable statement, everyone in sound of his voice gaped with
astonishment. Had it been any other Indian they would have said he was
drunk--but not John Redpath. He didn't drink.

"Growing?" echoed Silby stupidly.

"Yes. The damn stuff was growing. But it wasn't that which stampeded me
out of there. It was the globe."

"The globe!" said Silby, more mystified than ever.

"It was floating over the growing stuff, like a black balloon. Just
over my place the balloon began to sift down a shower of pebbles. Like
beans, they were; seeds, rather; for when they hit the ground they
started to sprout."

"Sprout?" The constable was capable of nothing more than an echo.

"I'm telling you the truth," continued Redpath. "Incredibly fast. I had
barely time to crank up the car and get out of there. I never would
have done it if th