`` What is over the hills ? '' he had asked of his mother . With a smile she had made answer , `` Many things , laddie . Wonderful things , beautiful things , heart-breaking things . '' `` Some day I shall go over the hills and find them all , Mother , '' he had said stoutly . She had laughed and sighed and caught him to her heart . He had no recollection of his father , who had died soon after his son 's birth , but how well he remembered his mother , his little , brown-eyed , girlish-faced mother ! He had lived on the homestead until he was twenty . He had tilled the broad fields and gone in and out among the people , and their life had been his life . But his heart was not in his work . He wanted to go beyond the hills and seek what he knew must be there . The valley was too narrow , too placid . He longed for conflict and accomplishment . He felt power and desire and the lust of endeavour stirring in him . Oh , to go over the hills to a world where men lived ! Such had been the goal of all his dreams . When his mother died he sold the farm to his cousin , Stephen Marshall . He supposed it still belonged to him . Stephen had been a good sort of a fellow , a bit slow and plodding , perhaps , bovinely content to dwell within the hills , never hearkening or responding to the lure of the beyond . Yet it might be he had chosen the better part , to dwell thus on the land of his fathers , with a wife won in youth , and children to grow up around him .
The childless , wifeless man looking down from the hill wondered if it might have been so XXXXX him had he been content to stay in the valley .
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