Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/380

360 No. 78. From "April, 1894.

"A curious case occurred to me last month, though it may be but a coincidence not worth recounting. On 28th March I received a letter from a lady, with whom I had not been in correspondence for about a year, stating that on the 26th she had either a vision or dream (I forget the expression) that she saw me in a very dangerous position under a horse from which many people were trying to relieve me. By return of post I wrote that I thought it a dream which was proved by contraries, as nothing of the sort had occurred. That afternoon I received notice of a last 'off day' with our pack of hounds, and the next morning on my way to covert I posted my letter. At the finish of a long run in the afternoon, my horse, pulling double down a steep hill, was unable to collect himself for a big bank at the bottom of the hill, breasted it, and fell head over heels into a deep and broad drop ditch on the far side, with me underneath him. His head and shoulders were at the bottom, and legs remained up on the landing side of the ditch. Many of the field dismounted, and after some minutes pulled the horse away, and got me from under, more or less stunned, but little the worse, except a few face cuts, the loss of a tooth, and a crushed stirrup, and the horse with a few head cuts. The horse was about my best hunter and never before guilty of such a thing, though, of course, it may have been but a hunting-field coincidence."

The letter in which the lady in question, the Hon. Mrs. Leir Carleton, related her dream, is unfortunately lost, but Sir Joseph Coghill writes:

", "May 3rd. 1894.

"On the 29th March last, my brother, Colonel Coghill, showed me a portion of a letter just received from a lady, who wrote describing a dream or vision in which she saw him meet with a serious accident from a horse, and she noticed a crowd of persons assisting him away."