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.