There was reason for haste. While the tunneling had been going on, all the grassfighting activity had ceased, for the militia had ordered weedburners, reapers, bulldozers and the rest off the scene. The weed, unhampered for the first time since Mrs Dinkman attacked it with her lawnmower, responded by growing and growing until more and more guardsmen had to be detached to the duty of keeping it back from the excavation--by the very means they had scorned so recently. Even their most frantic efforts could not prevent the grass from sending its most advanced tendrils down into the gaping hole where the wires were being laid to detonate the charge. There was so much dashing to and fro, so many orders relayed, so many dispatches delivered that I thought I might have been witnessing an outofdate Civilwar play instead of a peacetime action of the California National Guard. Captain Eltwiss--I kept wondering where I'd heard the name--was constantly being interrupted in what was apparently a very friendly conversation with Gootes by the arrival of officiallooking envelopes which he immediately stuffed into his pocket with every indication of vexation. "Silly old fools," he muttered, each time the incident happened. Quick inspections made, plans checked, an order was rasped to clear the vicinity. Gootes' agonized protest that he had to report the occasion for the _Intelligencer_'s readers was ignored. "Can't start making exceptions," explained Captain Eltwiss. Everyone--workingpress, militia, sightseers and all, had to move back a couple of blocks where intervening trees and houses cut us off from any view of the green hill. "This is terrible," exclaimed Gootes frantically. "Tragic. Howll I live it down? Howm I going to face W R? Godlike wrath. 'What poolhall were you dozing in, Gootes? Asleep on your bloody feet, ay, somnambulistic offspring of a threetoed sloth?' Wait all night for a story and then not get it, like the star legman on the Jackson Junior Highschool _Jive-Jitterbug_. I'll never be able to hold my head up again. Say something, say something, Weener--Ive _got_ to get this." "We'll be able to hear the explosion from here," I remarked to console him, for his distress was genuine. "Oh," he groaned. "Hear the explosion. Albert, Albert ... you have a fertile mind. Why didnt I hide myself before they told us to clear out? Why didnt I get W R to hire a plane? Why didnt I foresee this and do any of a hundred things? A microphone and automatic moviecamera ... Goony Gootes, they called him, the man who missed all bets.... A captive balloon, now.... Hay! What about a roof?" "Trees," I objected, with a mental picture of him bursting into the nearest house and demanding entrance to the roof. "Bushwa. Zair's no tree in z' way of z' old box over zair--allons!"