A wind that blew across it from the misty blue sea beyond was making wild music in the rugged firs above his head as he stood in an angle of the weather-grey longer fence , knee-deep in bracken . It had been by these firs he had halted twenty years ago , turning for one last glance at the valley below , the home valley which he had never seen since . 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 XXXXX these , things he had once known and loved and forgotten ?
above below beyond by in of since than that with