DREAM OF REPRIEVE

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 75, 20 June 1927, Page 12

DREAM OF REPRIEVE

A MURDERER’S VISION LETTER FROM PRISON A strange dream of escape from death preceded the reprieve of Alexander McWilliam Cairns, the murderer, who, after undergoing the ordeal of two trials and being condemned to death at the second, is now to live. His dream is related in a letter which he wrote to a friend, a former Borstal acquaintance, while he was in prison.—London “People.” “Thank God; it is the best news I have had,” cried the sister of Alexander McWilliam Cairns when she learned that her brother had been reprieved, after two trials, from the sentence of death passed on him for the murder of a motor-cyclist, Stanley Dalton, in Northumberland. Cairns was tried twice for the crime. Tne condemned man has written a series of remarkable letters to relatives and Li'iends since he has been in prison at Durham. In all the letters he claim.s that he is innocent. The following is a message which he wrote to a young man who was at Borstal Institution with him, telling him of a strange dream which he had in the condemned cell. “Let me tell you of the remarkable dream I had. in which you and three other Borstal boys figured. In the dream you and the other lads—whose names I cannot remember —and myself were walking down a lovely country lane on a bright summer’s day. Swords of Flame Flowers more beautiful than I have ever seen in my walking hours were growing on either side of the road. 1 turned to you and the other lads to remark on the gorgeousness of the scene, and I was startled to find that you had suddenly changed from young men into tiny boys of about four years of age. “I could not believe my eyes, and covered them with my hands; and when I again looked you were your normal self, but the others were now men of about fifty years of age. “Suddenly the three men seized me and placed me with my back to a tree. I now saw that they were carrying swords sheathed in scabbards. “After placing me agayist the tree the three men backed 10 paces, stood blades of which were all in flames, to attention, and drew the swords, the They then began to advance slowly toward me, and I looked to you appealingly to help me. Cross of Crimson “Suddenly you put your hand into your shirt, and drew forth a tiny dagger on which was painted a dross in crimson. You held the dagger by the blade and walked toward the men, who. when they saw the cross, shrieked, and vanished into thin air. “I rushed to embrace you, and then I awoke. “When I was a*boy I read the poem, ‘The dream of Eugene Aram.’ Aram, like myself, was a condemned man.” In a letter which Cairns wrote to another friend, he said: “In the light of all that has been disclosed during court proceedings I have been made to appear a cruel, brutal and utterly heartless wretch, incapable of any tender feelings whatever. “The charge of murder does not hurt as much as the fact that my friends are now suffering through my having deceived them and lied to them so much. “The charge does not worry me because I know in my own heart that I am not guilty. I often wonder if my friends really think I could have done young Dalton to death in the maimer suggested by the evidence.” In yet another letter he wrote: “I have only myself to blame for all this, but severe and unjust as this sentence is, I am not conscious of any dread. “The consciousness of my innocence is my strength, and that thought alone enables me to bear up.”