The following paragraph lately appeared in the Scotsman newspaper, and was quoted in the Times of Tuesday, April 25, 1865. The dream of which it gives an account is forcibly reminiscent of the one given at pp. 230 - 233 of this volume.

'The legal proceedings which lately took place in the Sheriff Court of Clackmannanshire with regard to the violation of a grave in the churchyard at Alloa, and the unwarrantable exhumation of the body of James Quin, had their origin, it is stated, in a remarkable dream of the mother of the deceased. Young Quin died in September, 1863, and was buried in a lair in the churchyard, which was purchased by his father from William Donaldson, the kirk treasurer, it being agreed that the price was to be paid by instalments. About six months afterwards Robert Blair, the sexton or grave-digger, took upon himself (without the authority, it would appear, of Donaldson) to sell the same lair to another person, and to inter therein a relative of the new purchaser, without, however, at that time exhuming the body of Quin, the former tenant. Some considerable time after this, the mother of Quin, being desirous of erecting a headstone on the grave of her son, made some inquiries with that view, in the course of which she heard something of another person haying been buried in his grave, this having, as she stated, been "cast up" by Blair's nephew to a younger son of hers on their way from the Sunday school. But the grave-digger denied the truth of this story, and managed to pacify her. Feeling, however, that he had got into a scrape by the lair having been resold, he, some weeks after Mrs. Quin had interrogated him on the subject, dug up the body of her son during the night of Thursday, the 23rd of March last, and re-interred it in other ground. Now, on that very Thursday night, as sworn to by Mrs. Quin at the trial, she had this remarkable dream: - She dreamt that her boy stood in his nightgown at her bedside, and said to her, "Oh, mother, put me back to my own bed." She then awoke her husband, and, forgetting in her half-dreaming state that her son was dead, said to him, "Jimmie is out of his bed; put him back into it;" after which she fell asleep, and again had the same dream. A third time during the same night she dreamt that her son was standing beside her bed; but on this occasion, remembering that he was dead, the figure of the grave-digger was mixed up with that of the boy, and he appeared to be shoving his spade into the body. Awakening in great trepidation, and feeling certain that her boy had been taken out of his grave, she went to the grave-digger, and vehemently accused him of having dug; up the body, which, after some prevarication, he at last admitted. Hence arose the action of damages against Donaldson, the kirk treasurer, and Blair, the grave-digger, which, being restricted to £12, was brought in the Small Debt Court. The sheriff, after a long proof, assoilzied Donaldson, and found Blair liable in damages, which, the parties not having settled the same extrajudicially, have since been assessed at £5.'