the valley became too crowded. There was no longer enough of
everything for all, so that quarrelling and even fighting grew almost
into a habit; the heads of families and the wise elders did their best
to keep the peace, but were not much listened to. At the same time the
younger people were beginning to wonder what there was on the other side
of the mountains. Once in a while a huntsman, in the excitement of
following his game, would climb to some high point, from which he would
look down into other valleys, with more mountains beyond. Then he would
take up some comrade with him, and they would stand there long, gazing
and wondering. Then some of the bolder, more curious boys and youths had
followed the river into the narrow passage it had broken for itself
through the mountains. The first who ventured had not gone very far.
They had felt dreadfully frightened and lonesome in that dark, wild
pass, between the two rugged rocky walls, so high that they seemed to
join at the top, showing only a little strip of blue sky, and with the
water foaming and roaring deep down below, and they had been glad to get
back into the safety and sunshine of their own valley. But they had gone
again, many together, and got farther,--for many will be brave where one
is scared,--and it became known for a positive fact that there was a way
out of the valley. Of course there was much curiosity to know whither it
led and what the land on the other side might be like.

So it came to pass that some young families, who were going to set up
new homesteads of their own, instead of crowding into some of the
scantily measured lots of poor soil which were all that was left in the
valley, collected the household goods and the domestic animals which
were their due share of the community's property, and started off
through the mountain pass, following the river. They were never heard of
more.

Others did the same. And still others, again and again. It was like bees
swarming. From time to time children, brothers, cousins said good-by and
went. None ever came back. None ever were heard from. All that was known
of them was that they did not all go the same way. Some went west, and
some south; and some northwest or southwest. And they never met or heard
from one another, either. They became and remained total strangers; did
not even know of one another's existence. But all treasured memories of
the old home--the latest gone, of course, more than those that we