Prince Lazybones and Other Stories | Page 2

houses and farms on the Lazybones property, but the money not being forthcoming for repairs, they had been each in turn left for another in better condition, until the monastery--what was left of it--with its solidly built walls, offered what seemed to be a permanent home.
Here Morpheus lined a cell with tapestries and books, and wrote his sonnets. Here Leo slept and ate, and housed his dogs. The servants grumbled at the damp and mould, but made the chimneys roar with blazing logs, and held many a merry carousal where the old monks had prayed and fasted. The more devout ones rebuked these proceedings, and said they were enough to provoke a visit from the Evil One; but as yet the warning had no effect, as the revels went on as usual.
Besides being a poet, Morpheus was conducting Leo's education. Undertaken in the common way, this might have interfered with the delicate modes of thought required for the production of poems, but the Lazybones were never without ingenuity. Morpheus so arranged matters that Leo could study without damage to his father's poems. The books were marked for a month's study, and Leo's recitations consisted of a written essay which was to comprise all the knowledge acquired in that time. Thus writing and spelling were included, and made to do duty for the higher flights of his mind.
I do not tell how often Leo made his returns, neither do I mention how many papers Morpheus found no time to examine, but I may urge that Leo's out-door exercise demanded much attention, and that his father's excursions in Dream-land were equally exacting. But Leo, though he hated books, did not hate information. He knew every feathered thing by name as far as he could see it. He knew every oak and pine and fir and nut tree as a familiar friend. He knew every rivulet, every ravine, every rabbit-burrow. The streams seemed to him as melodious as the song-birds, and the winds had voices. He knew where to find the first blossom of spring and the latest of autumn, the ripest fruit and most abundant vines. He could tell just where the nests were and the number of eggs, whether of the robin or the waterfowl. He knew the sunniest bank and shadiest dell, the smoothest path, with its carpet of pine-needles and fringe of fern, or the roughest crag and darkest abyss. He could read the clouds like an open page, and predict fine weather or the coming storm. He knew where the deer couched and where they came to drink, and when the fawns would leave their mothers, and no trout was too cunning for him.
But he did not know the use of a rifle. He had all sorts of lures for the creatures he wanted to tame, but no ways of killing them. For why should he kill them? There was always food enough; he was seldom hungry, and these were his friends. He liked to look them in the eyes; he liked to win them to him, soothe their fears if they had any, and then watch their pretty joy when their liberty was regained. And how could he have done this if their blood had been upon his hands? How could he have quieted the throbbing little hearts if murder had been in his own?
Thus Leo spent his time, delightfully and innocently. If life were only a summer's day! But already winter was approaching. Discontent was brewing on the estate. Taxes were unpaid; tenants were grumbling at high rents; laborers were threatening and their wives complaining.
Frequently, in the very midst of composing a poem, Morpheus would be called to adjust a difficulty, settle a dispute, or revise an account. This so disturbed his delicate nerves that illness, or the appearance of it, was sure to follow. He would then take to his bed, refuse all but a little spiced wine, allowing no coarse food to pass his lips, and strive to remember the beautiful words of which he had intended to make verses; but, alas! the words had flown, as well as the ideas which had suggested them, like so many giddy little butterflies.

CHAPTER II
The monastery had been a grand old pile in its day; it was not one simple building, but a cluster of habitations which had grown with the growth and resources of the order which founded it. Like all feudal structures it had its means of defence--its moat and drawbridge, its tower of observation, and in its heavy gates and thick walls loop-holes and embrasures for weapons.
But grass grew now in the moat and birds nested in the embrasures, while Leo's dogs bounded through chapel and refectory and cloister, parts of the latter being converted into a stable.
Many of the walls had tumbled in