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.