But the father soon left him on some foreign mission for his government and the boy chafed as usual under his tasks and confinement. One day, too much mathematics drove him into making his escape by leaping from the window, and making off through the gardens attached to the school where he was confined. A watchful corporal soon overhauled him, however, and brought him back, where he was confined on board some sort of prison ship in the harbour. His father soon returned, when he was released, not without a severe reprimand. We next find him again in the city of Nantes struggling with more odious mathematics, and spending all his leisure time in the fields and woods, studying the birds. About this time he began a series of drawings of the French birds, which grew to upwards of two hundred, all bad enough, he says, but yet real representations of birds, that gave him a certain pleasure. They satisfied his need of expression. At about this time, too, though the year we do not know, his father concluded to send him to the United States, apparently to occupy a farm called Mill Grove, which the father had purchased some years before, on the Schuylkill river near Philadelphia. In New York he caught the yellow fever: he was carefully nursed by two Quaker ladies who kept a boarding house in Morristown, New Jersey. In due time his father's agent, Miers Fisher, also a Quaker, removed him to his own villa near Philadelphia, and here Audubon seems to have remained some months. But the gay and ardent youth did not find the atmosphere of the place congenial. The sober Quaker grey was not to his taste. His host was opposed to music of all kinds, and to dancing, hunting, fishing and nearly all other forms of amusement. More than that, he had a daughter between whom and Audubon he apparently hoped an affection would spring up. But Audubon took an unconquerable dislike to her. Very soon, therefore, he demanded to be put in possession of the estate to which his father had sent him. Of the month and year in which he entered upon his life at Mill Grove, we are ignorant. We know that he fell into the hands of another Quaker, William Thomas, who was the tenant on the place, but who, with his worthy wife, seems to have made life pleasant for him. He soon became attached to Mill Grove, and led a life there just suited to his temperament. "Hunting, fishing, drawing, music, occupied my every moment; cares I knew not and cared naught about them. I purchased excellent and beautiful horses, visited all such neighbours as I found congenial spirits, and was as happy as happy could be."