But then the firs had been little more than vigorous young saplings ; they were tall , gnarled trees now , with lichened trunks , and their lower boughs were dead . But high up their tops were green and caught the saffron light of the west . He remembered that when a boy he had thought there was nothing more beautiful than the evening sunshine falling athwart the dark green fir boughs on the hills . As he listened to the swish and murmur of the wind , the earth-old tune with the power to carry the soul back to the dawn of time , the years fell away from him and he forgot much , remembering more . He knew now that there had always been a longing in his heart to hear the wind-chant in the firs . He had called that longing by other names , but he knew it now for what it was when , hearing , he was satisfied . He was a tall man with iron-grey hair and the face of a conqueror -- strong , pitiless , unswerving . Eagle eyes , quick to discern and unfaltering to pursue ; jaw square and intrepid ; mouth formed to keep secrets and cajole men to his will -- a face that hid much and revealed little . It told of power and intellect , but the soul of the man was a hidden thing . Not in the arena where he had fought and triumphed , giving fierce blow for blow , was it to be shown ; but here , looking down on the homeland , with the strength of the hills about him , it rose dominantly and claimed its own . The old bond held . Yonder below him was home -- the old house that had sheltered him , the graves of his kin , the wide fields where his boyhood dreams had been dreamed . Should he go down to it ? This was the question he asked himself . He had come back to it , heartsick of his idols of the marketplace . For years they had satisfied him , the buying and selling and getting gain , the pitting of strength and craft against strength and craft , the tireless struggle , the exultation of victory . Then , suddenly , they had failed their worshipper ; they ceased to satisfy ; the sacrifices he had heaped on their altars availed him nothing in this new need and hunger of his being . His gods mocked him and he wearied of their service . Were there not better things than these , things he had once known and loved and forgotten ? Where were the ideals of his youth , the lofty aspirations that had upborne him then ?
Where was the eagerness and zest of new dawns , the earnestness of well-filled , purposeful hours XXXXX labour , the satisfaction of a good day worthily lived , at eventide the unbroken rest of long , starry nights ?
As against athwart for in of on than that with