ery nook and cranny of his home, for
when it rained, or heavy fogs hung threateningly about, his rambles were
confined to the various quarters of the monastery.

On such days the stone floors and bare walls were very inhospitable,
but he would sometimes find a new passage to loiter in or a window-ledge
to loll over and look from as he watched the rain drip from the carved
nose of an ugly old monk whose head adorned the water-spout.

I don't know whether it ever occurred to Leo that this world is a busy
one. The very persistence of the pouring rain might have suggested it,
as well as the beehives down in the kitchen court, where some of his
many friends were storing their winter provision, for bees as well as
birds were familiar to him; but he had the true Lazybones instinct of
not following a thought too far, and so he looked and lolled and yawned,
wishing for fine weather, for a new lining to his ragged old coat, or
soles to his slipshod shoes, but never once supposing that any effort of
his own could gain them.

When it was cold the kitchen was apt to be his resort. It was a long and
low apartment on the ground-floor, and its wide fireplace, with stone
settle beside the hooks and cranes for pots and kettles, had doubtless
been as cheery a corner for the old monks to warm their toes after a
foraging expedition as it was for Leo, who liked to smell the savory
stews.

On the day of which I write the rain had fallen incessantly, and Leo had
been more than usually disturbed by it, for cold and dreary though it
was, the servants had turned him out of the kitchen. They would not have
him there.

"Idle, worthless fellow!" said the cook; "he lolls about as a spy upon
us, to repeat to the master every word he hears."

This was quite untrue and unjust, for Leo rarely conversed with his
father, and seldom saw him since Morpheus took his meals as well as his
woes to bed with him, as he had done at the present moment.

But the household was in revolt; the uneasiness from outside had crept
within, and there was quarrelling among the servants.

"What shall I do?" said Leo to himself. "The rain is too heavy, or I
would go out in it; but I have no place to get dry when I become soaked,
and I can't go to bed in the daytime, as my father does. I wonder what
he'd say if I went to him? Probably this: 'You have given wings to the
finest of rhymes, and spoiled the turn of an exquisite verse; now, sir,
what atonement can you make for