These “White boys” came into the bleach-field one night, and washed their faces in the stream that ran by it, and dried themselves with the linen that was bleaching in the field. Whatever offence the White boys were charged with, my people were put into the indictment with them, either as participants or sympathizers, or as assisting in the escape of criminals who had committed offences. It was considered they knew who blackened the linen, and they should be punished as they wouldn’t tell on them. My grandfather, after using all the influence of all the friends, had got some letters from the lords and landlords around to the grand jury of the Cork assizes. He had them one evening, and he should be in Cork city at ten o’clock next morning. There were no trains running anywhere at that time. He got on horseback, and galloped to Rossmore. He got a fresh horse at Rossmore. Then he galloped on to Ballineen and got another fresh horse there; then another in Bandon, and another in Ballinhassig that landed him at Cork city courthouse before ten o’clock in the morning. He gave in his letters to the grand jury, waited a few hours, and returned home with the news that the bills were “ignored.” That is; that the grand jury “threw out” the bills and did not follow up the prosecution of the case against the people who owned the bleach. You may think that’s a kind of a make-up of a story about my grandfather getting three or four relays of horses all in one night. I don’t wonder you would think so. Perhaps I thought so myself when I was a child listening to it at the fireside; but, stop awhile; wait till I come to write my chapter on genealogy, and come to show you how my grandfather had family relations and connections in every corner of the county, and then you will not be surprised at what I am saying. You’ll be more surprised at what I have to say yet. The White boy indictment was before I was born. Soon after I was born, my father got into trouble with the head lord of the soil by selling to Mick Hurley, the carpenter, four tall ash trees that were growing in the kitchen garden back of the house. Lord Carberry claimed that the trees belonged to the soil--belonged to him--and that my father had no right to cut them down and sell them. My father had as much right to that soil as Lord Carberry had; he had more right to it, in fact. One of the Irish histories I read in my youth has these words: “The O’Donovans--a branch of the MacCarthys--had extensive possessions in the neighborhood of Ross.” They owned all Ross, and all around it, but the turn in the world came that turned them and turned many other old Irish families upside down, and left the Englishmen on top. CHAPTER VIII. A CHAPTER ON GENEALOGY.