The prospect of winter encouraged Peter to turn his mind towards literary pursuits. There were days of storm and long evenings to be occupied; and the little savage considered he might fill those hours with work for which his talents seemed to qualify him, and possibly bequeath to posterity some abiding monument of his genius. Peter had a weekly paper and studied it well. He gathered from it that people still wrote books; apparently every one wrote thern, though only about one in every hundred was published. Most people had the manuscripts of their books put away in cupboards, linhays, and old teapots, waiting the favourable moment to bring them forth and astonish the world. This was something of a revelation to Peter. Where was his book! Why had he remained so long a mute inglorious scholar? Possibly the commoners who met him in daily intercourse had their books completed and stored away safely in their barns, and he was certainly as learned as any of them. Peter went off to Master, and opened to him the secret of his mind. Master was entirely sympathetic. He gave it as his opinion that any one could write a book. When the art of forming letters of the alphabet had been acquired, nothing indeed remained, except pen, ink, and paper; and, as he reminded Peter, Mother Cobley sold ink at one penny the bottle, while pen and paper could be obtained from the same source for an additional twopence. Genius could therefore startle the world at threepence a head. Peter was profoundly interested. He indicated the big tomes, which Master kept always lying beside him: a copy of the _Arcadia_, a Bible dictionary, a volume of Shakespeare, and a few books of poetry, most of them presents from a former rector long deceased, and suggested that Master was accountable for the lot. The old man beamed through his spectacles, coughed uneasily, and generally assumed that attitude of modesty which is said to be one of the most marked traits of literary men. "You can spell turnips," Master reminded. "Sure 'nuff," said Peter. "I can spell harder words than he. I can spell hyacinth, and he'm a proper little brute." He proceeded to spell the word, making only three mistakes. Master advised him to confine himself for the present to more simple language, and went on to ask what was the style and subject of Peter's proposed undertaking. "I wants yew to tell me," was the answer. Master had an idea that genius ought to be inspired from within and not from without, but he merely answered: "Nothing's no trouble, varmer," and suggested that Peter should compose a diary. "'Tis what a man does every day," he explained. "How he gets up, and how he goes to bed, and how he yets his dinner, and how his belly feels." Peter considered that the idea was brilliant. Such an item as how he drank his beer would certainly prove entertaining, and might very well be original.