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I A DEFENCE OF THE BOERS.

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DREAMS. I

Newyddion
Dyfynnu
Rhannu

DREAMS. I What Part tky have Played in some Well- known Crimes. Tha Story of ssmg very Rsraarkable I Dit ections. A recent number of a Scottish contemporary contained the following remarkable article — Signs, arcaiiis, and portents played no incon- siderable paat in our law courts, and the reports M thfl sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are brimful of references thereto. In connection with dreams, perhaps t ne of the most rernark- iblo trials—certainly of later davs-was that in connection with the slaying of Maria Martin, or the murder of the Red Bain, in which the murderer Was discovered wholly and solely through the- means of information gained through -t dream. The victim was the daughter of a mole • etcher, who possessed far more of bea-uty and education than most young women of her class. Needless to ::ay, she was the cause of much jealouay, and among her lovers was a rich young man named John Corder, by ^?L;»m she was pcduced and then abondone.1. Iii ,-tlM 'vlllLafl Corder, John's brother, appuzL-C.1 I upon the scene and under a promise of marriage Maria was again betrayed, and afterwards tindiug that she was to become a mother, she prayed her betrayer to carry out his promise. Tins, however, was not to the taste of William Corder, who, llTldtt promise of a secret marriage, made arrangements with the girl to meet him at a red barn on bis mother's bnu, whence they would leave for a neighbouring town and get married- The girl met h'm &s? arranged, when he shot ani buried her beneath the flooring of the barn. William Corder then disappeared, and returning after a few days, tell Mr. and Mrs. Martin that the marriage had taken place and that their daughter was living at Ipswich. Some months elapsed, the barn wherein the body was buried was tilled with com, and as no tidings came from the young woman, Corder gave as a. reason that she had hurt her right hand, and therefore could not write to her par ents, shortly after which Corder left the neighbour- hood. Some time later Mrs. Martin dreamt that her daughter had been murdered by Corder and bjuried in the barn, and so frequently was the dream repeated that in the end she persuade d her husband to get the grain removed, and to dig at the spot incdcateu in the dream, which he did when the body was immediately discovered a,nd identified. Suspicion naturally pointing to Corder, he was traced to London, where he was found married to a schoolmistress, on whose earnings he was living. Ho was arrested, found guilty, arnl duly executed, the meting out of justice in this instance being entirely due to a. dream. An Irish murderer -%Vus convicted largely upon dream evidence. One Rogers, a Waterford publican, dreamed that ho shaw a man murder another in a particular green spot on the summit of a neighbouring raoantain. Un the following day he described both men he had seen in his dream with perfect accuracy to many of his companions. One of too men was exceptionally strong; the other, who committed the crime, was weak and small. Rogers at length prevailed upon the parish priest to accompany him to the spot, which was easily found, which bore no traces of a death-strugglo. On the following day, however, two men entered the public-house whose appearance tallied exactly with those in the dream vision. When they rose to leave, Rogers begged the one whom he expected to be murdered to remain, but un- availingly. After the man had left, he nearly fainted from fright, and-in the end persuaded a neighbour to accompany him t-o the green spot on the hill, where, sure enough, the tragedy of the dream had been enacted in real life. Tha murdered was tracked and captured, and g-ers was the principal witness against him. His description ofhis dream was so vivid, that the murderer immediately ac knowledged hi3 guilt, an d said that he killed his companion with eight stabs, exactly as pictured in the dream. In 1810, at FrankfoTt, in Germany, a woman named Kraeme, made wtlication to a local judge to be sworn, as she had some infor- mation to impart relating to a murder com- mitted in a remote village in Rus;a, many days' journey from her German domicile. Her story ran thus: -Ten years before her only son had left home. She heard nothing of him, and had no idea at all where he was living until the night before, when his spirit a^neared to her and told her what she now hastened to re- late. i'oe revelation was that after leaving home the young man had wandered about Europe till he had finally found work in the village of Klaf, in Russia. Here he had fallen in love with a serf's daughter who had a Russian beau. On the preceding night, this latter had inveigled tee ycung Teuton into the country, where he had stabbed him and them concealed the body in a cave off the highway. The judge was so im- pressed with the description, that he forwaxded it to a rotary in Klaf. In the meantime Karl Kraeme had been missed, and on the receipt of the dream, story, the police searched for the cave, found it exactly located as described, and also found the body with a wound corresponding with that detailed in the vision. The murderer was at once arrested, and the widow Kraeme undertook the long journey to avenge her son's death. Her recital in court was vivid in the extreme, and she screamed with fright when she firat saw the prisoner, whom she Ticked out from a crowd of men in a dimly-lighted cell. She also identified the woman who was the cause of the trouble equally easy. The 74th Highlanders have a. legend handed down for three generations at least. A captain, whoso name escapes us, was writing in his tent at Sbolapare, when a young soldier in hospital garb entered. "Please, sir, I wish to have my arrears sent to my mother. Will you kindly take down the address?" The officer did so without think- ing when he looked up the visitor was gone. Then it struck him that. this was very irregular. He called th seargeant, who informed him that the voung man in question had died m the hospital the day before, leaving an unusual sum of money, and that the audress of his friends could not be discovered. It is alleged that a report of these facts, drawn up there and then, still exists.

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