bore crops planted the previous fall, or were in preparation for the
spring-planting. Still others, close to the brood barns and pens, were
being grazed by rotund Shropshire and French-Merino ewes, or were
being hogged off by white Gargantuan brood-sows that brought a flash
of pleasure in his eyes as he rode past and gazed.

He rode through what was almost a village, save that there were
neither shops nor hotels. The houses were bungalows, substantial,
pleasing to the eye, each set in the midst of gardens where stouter
blooms, including roses, were out and smiling at the threat of late
frost. Children were already astir, laughing and playing among the
flowers or being called in to breakfast by their mothers.

Beyond, beginning at a half-mile distant to circle the Big House, he
passed a row of shops. He paused at the first and glanced in. One
smith was working at a forge. A second smith, a shoe fresh-nailed on
the fore-foot of an elderly Shire mare that would disturb the scales
at eighteen hundred weight, was rasping down the outer wall of the
hoof to smooth with the toe of the shoe. Forrest saw, saluted, rode
on, and, a hundred feet away, paused and scribbled a memorandum in the
notebook he drew from his hip-pocket.

He passed other shops--a paint-shop, a wagon-shop, a plumbing shop, a
carpenter-shop. While he glanced at the last, a hybrid machine, half-
auto, half-truck, passed him at speed and took the main road for the
railroad station eight miles away. He knew it for the morning butter-
truck freighting from the separator house the daily output of the
dairy.

The Big House was the hub of the ranch organization. Half a mile from