He would be a stranger there , even among his kin . He would stay awhile on the hill , until the night came down over it , and then he would go back to his own place . Down below him , on the crest of a little upland , he saw his old home , a weather-grey house , almost hidden among white birch and apple trees , with a thick fir grove to the north of it . He had been born in that old house ; his earliest memory was of standing on its threshold and looking afar up to the long green hills . `` 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 XXXXX his cousin , Stephen Marshall .
With after among below in of on over to until