Canny and just are almost always the judges at an American County fair. Known personally throughout the region, selected for their uprightness and knowledge of special beast or fowl or any product of the fields, their verdict is almost mechanically accepted as a final and just one. More and more interested became Jason regarding the issue of his experiments in thus entering into competition with breeders, some of whom had raised sheep before he was born, and he puzzled himself much over the problem of where, in the opinion of these unbiased experts, he would prove to have done best. The decision, when it came, was hardly a surprise to him. His Merinos, it is true, received favorable mention, but his Southdowns took first prize in a field where there was decided and worthy competition. A proud man was Jason Goodell when he saw the blue ribbons tied by a gray-bearded giant in jeans about the necks of his two entries. He made an instant resolution. "I'll not raise wool," he said, "I'll leave that to the Ohioans of the Western Reserve. I'll raise mutton!" He sold the prize-winners for a mighty price and returned to his farm. Within a week the flock of Merinos was sold, as well, and the money so received was invested in an importation of more Southdowns, with blood as blue as that of the Hapsburgs, and far stronger. Then began sheep-raising that was sheep-raising. It is hard to serve two masters and it must be admitted that, since his thoughts and plans had turned so absorbingly to Southdowns, Jason felt less surpassingly the inspiration of Melissa. There had been a time when he dreamed of her almost nightly, but, now, his sleeping visions were of great flocks upon the hillsides and the eyes into which he looked were not always the sparkling ones of Melissa, but it might be the soft, gentle eyes of quite another color of some great ewe. Dreams are grotesque things. Still, instinctively, sometimes fervently, Jason worked and devised for the girl who had gone away. The big orchard back of the house and barns, now growing into fruitfulness, he cared for well. In the spring, feeding the just-weaned calves, as he put his fingers in the mouth of some vigorous youngster and then thrust its muzzle into the milk, that it might learn to drink, he thought as the calf butted joyously at the pail as if it were his own mother, how Melissa would like the calves and how much better than he she would attend to them! He was somewhat troubled, too, because the spring in the hollow was not nearer the house--he did not want Melissa to carry water so many yards--but he planned a "spring-house" with a cement floor, where Melissa should keep the milk and make the butter. That would be less labor for her. There would not be much butter-making anyhow He was not going to have butter and eggs to sell. Only enough cattle and horses and hogs and chickens for farm purposes did he intend to keep. And he bought yet another eighty acres of land.