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.
It is wonderful how some over-mastering aim, one the accomplishment of which requires concentration of thought and exertion of all energy in one direction, will get its grip upon a man and hold it to the end. With high and low it is the same. Mozart died with the score of the Requiem Mass hardly dry from his feeble hand. Napoleon died with the word of command upon his lips. Seekers, investigators, experimenters in all fields, great and small, have grown into a forgetfulness of aught save one object, have abandoned all outside, and have dreamed and devised and labored toward one absorbing end. Such compelling influence in life may come to the farmer as to others. With Jason, who recognized a farmer's dignity, who knew that the farmer often fought men's battles and at all times fed them, the attainment of his own ambition was nothing small. He became almost a monomaniac over Southdowns. How they thrived!—for Nature ever loves a mentor. Peas grew where oats had grown, clover where was before a cornfield, turnips where had been potatoes, for sheep must eat in winter. It became a Southdown farm, and acres were yet added, for the undertaking was most profitable—until the time came when Jason's keen eyes could not, as he stood looking from the barn door, reach more than vaguely the outlines of his own domain. One day, a girl wearing a sunbonnet matching exactly in shape and color the one Melissa had once worn, passed by and Jason's thoughts went back. That afternoon he took horses and wagon and drove to the growing town. He returned with a piano. "Melissa may have learned to play," he said to himself, "and she will be glad to find it here." But, for weeks, perhaps for months afterward, no Melissa came again into his waking dreams nor in his sleep.
"THE CHILDREN CARRIED AWAY ARMFULS OF BLOSSOMS"
He had abundance of help about him now. Another hired man, accompanied by his wife, had been brought into the house, the wife proving a notable housekeeper and relieving Jason of all petty duties. He visited his neighbors and was liked among them. The children especially were fond of him and he allowed them to visit his house at will and to carry away armfuls of blossoms from his great flower-garden, seeing to it only that they did not harm the plants. But the parlor, with its furniture still unworn, though becoming somewhat old-fashioned now, and with its piano still untouched, was never entered except for dusting, and the front door was never opened.
Far and wide as the great breeder of Southdown sheep, became known the name of Jason Goodell, and his flocks and barns grew with acres steadily. One afternoon a traveling nurseryman came to see him upon business and stayed to dinner. They chatted over the meal:
"I was over at Wishtigo last week," said the man; "drove over one day and came back the next. Who d'ye think I met?"