Cries at the way Les gets disheartened (5)
I believe the answer is:
howls
'cries' is the definition.
(howl is a kind of cry)
'at the way les gets disheartened' is the wordplay.
'at' says to put letters next to each other.
'the way les' becomes 'how' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'gets' becomes 'lets' (letting is a kind of getting).
'disheartened' means to remove the middle letters.
'lets' with its middle taken out is 'ls'.
'how' put next to 'ls' is 'HOWLS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for howls that I've seen is " Wails".)