10 HISTORY OF THE MACOUN FAMILY 



would see everyone bowing their heads, fearing that the bridge 

 was falling upon them. 



As time passed things became more serious and my life seem- 

 ed to have been taken up with working at one thing or another. 

 I was always a busy-body. One time, when I was a small boy, 

 they were building a large oblong haystack in my Aunt's stack- 

 yard and when the stack was nearly up the greater part of it 

 slipped and fell down. When my cousin looked around I was 

 missing, but as one of them had seen me gathering up the hay 

 close to the stack at the time it fell, my cousin crept under and 

 finally reached me and when I was brought out I was insensible 

 but recovered shortly. Time passed rapidly and I grew up to be 

 a boy of sixteen, and at this time a great flood took place in the 

 Lagan, a river near where we lived, and carried off 1 ,600 webs of 

 fine linen that were on the bleach greens. The flood had come so 

 suddenly and it was of such magnitude that no one had ever seen 

 anything like it before. It carried the cloth over the meadows 

 that were flooded and strung the webs in bushes and along the 

 banks and on every obstruction the water met with for fifteen 

 miles down stream towards Belfast. I suspect that I took chances 

 as I got great credit for getting four webs that others were unable 

 to get at. I took these to the office and returned them and, of 

 course, got the bonus that was being given to anyone who obtained 

 a web. The wife of the gentleman who owned the bleach green 

 saw my mother and myself in Lurgan some time after that and 

 my mother told her that I was the boy who saved the webs and 

 the old lady put her hand on my head and said that she had heard 

 we were going to America and likely I would be President there 

 before I died. Of course I was very proud. 



My brother Frederick was now nearly twenty-one years old 

 and he decided that as soon as he was of age he would sell the 

 property and we would go to Australia. The year before he be- 

 came of age a law was passed in England that was called "The 

 Encumbered Estates Ireland Bill." This was in the year 1849. 

 Under this Bill any entailed property in Ireland could be sold. 

 In due time my brother attained his majority and sold our pro- 

 perty and we prepared to start for Australia. My mother, how- 



