ething that, had it been uttered aloud, sounded very like a bitter
malediction, Dick rushed from the room, slamming the door violently after
him as he went.

'That's the temper that helps a man to get on in life,' said the old man,
as he turned once more to his accounts, and set to work to see where he had
blundered in his figures.

CHAPTER XVII

DICK'S REVERIE

When Dick Kearney left his father, he walked from the house, and not
knowing or much caring in what direction he went, turned into the garden.

It was a wild, neglected sort of spot, with fruit-trees of great size, long
past bearing, and close underwood in places that barred the passage. Here
and there little patches of cultivation appeared, sometimes flowering
plants, but oftener vegetables. One long alley, with tall hedges of box,
had been preserved, and led to a little mound planted with laurels and
arbutus, and known as 'Laurel Hill'; here a little rustic summer-house had
once stood, and still, though now in ruins, showed where, in former days,
people came to taste the fresh breeze above the tree-tops, and enjoy the
wide range of a view that stretched to the Slieve-Bloom Mountains, nearly
thirty miles away.

Young Kearney reached this spot, and sat down to gaze upon a scene every
detail of which was well known to him, but of which he was utterly
unconscious as he looked. 'I am turned out to starve,' cried he aloud, as
though there was a sense of relief in thus proclaiming his sorrow to the
winds. 'I am told to go and work upon the roads, to live by my daily
labour. Treated like a gentleman until I am bound to that condition by
every tie of feeling and kindred, and then bade to know myself as an
outcast. I have not even Joe Atlee's resource--I have not imbibed the
instincts of the lower orders, so as to be able to give them back to them
in fiction or in song. I cannot either idealise rebellion or make treason
tuneful.

'It is not yet a week since that same Atlee envied me my station as the son
and heir to this place, and owned to me that there was that in the sense of
name and lineage that more than balanced personal success, and here I am
now, a beggar! I can enlist, however, blessings on the noble career that
ignores character and defies capacity. I don't know that I'll bring much
loyalty to Her Majesty's cause, but I'll lend her the aid of as broad
shoulders and tough sinews as my neighbours.' And here his voice grew
louder and harsher, and