And to the wanderer it would seem no bad thing that he should do so. Yet he did not so. When the sun had sunk and risen a few times he would stretch his arms, maybe gazing round at the landscape with a rather sardonic smile, and be gone through the forest or across the water. And the homelanders, nettled, would shrug their shoulders, and thank their gods for having rid them of a fool. Their gods were many, including the sun and moon, their clear stream, apple-trees and cherry-trees and fig-trees and trees that gave nuts, rose-bushes in summer, rain, and also fire--fire, the god that themselves had learnt to make from flint, fire that made meat itself godlike. But they prayed to no god, not being aware that they needed anything. And they had no priesthood. When a youth lost his heart to a maid he approached her, and laid his hands gently upon her shoulders, and then, if she did not turn away from him, he put his hands about her waist and lifted her three times from the ground. This sufficed: they were now man and wife, and lived happily, or not so, ever after. Nor was it needful that the rite should be only thus. If a maid lost her heart to a youth, the laid hands could be hers, and the shoulders his, and if he turned not away from her, if thrice he lifted her from the ground, this too was wedlock. If there were no good cave for them to take as their own, bride and bridegroom built them a hut of clay and wattles. Such huts were already numerous, dotted about in all directions. Elder folk thought them very ugly, and said that they spoilt the landscape. Yet what was to be done? It is well that a people should multiply. Though these homelanders now deemed themselves very many indeed (their number, you see, being so much higher than they ever could count up to, even incorrectly), yet not even the eldest of them denied that there was plenty of room and plenty of food for more. And plenty of employment, you ask? They did not worry about that. The more babies there were, the more children and grown folk would there be anon to take turns in minding the ample flocks and herds, and the more leisure for all to walk or sit around, talking about the weather or about one another. They made no fetish of employment. I have said that they were not bad. Had you heard them talked about by one another, you might rather doubt this estimate. You would have heard little good of any one. No family seemed to approve of its neighbours. Even between brothers and sisters mutual trust was rare. Even husbands and wives bickered. To strangers, as you have seen, these people could be charming. I do not say they were ever violent among themselves. That was not their way. But they lacked kindness. Happiness is said to beget kindness. Were these people not happy? They deemed themselves so. Nay, there was to come a time when, looking back, they felt that they had been marvellously happy. This time began on the day in whose dawn smoke was seen rising from Hay Hill.