REVEALED IN A DREAM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 348, 26 March 1910, Page 10

REVEALED IN A DREAM.

SPOILS ',)!• BURGLARY DISCOVERED THROUGH REALISTIC VISION. \\ eaned out by his search for a quantity of .silver stolen frutu a Monmouthshire villa, a sergeant of police fell asleep, and dreamed twice of iiinlim.' the lost property beneath a flagstone. ° He got up, and went straight to the place where the booty had been secreted, and drew the whole of it from its hiuiii"place. ° Such is the story recalled bv the death at Cardill of Mr. J. Benelield, who is well remembered in Monmouthshire as a sergeant in the county constabulary. He .afterwards became a retainer of Lord Tredegar. Mr. Benelield's curious story was reduced to writing and duly signed. The burglary was committed at Macben, and when on duty in the village on the day before the occurrence, the sergeant passed a man who was quite unknown to him out whose appearance he did not like Mir. Benefield returned to the spot, cut a stick from the fence, and measured the footprints. The ground was wet at the time.

A Mr. Morris' villa was entered during that night, and a clock wnieh stood on the drawing-room 'table, a set oi silver service (tea and coffee), with other things, of the total value oi £3O were stolen. A footprint discovered agreed with the measurement the ofliser had previously taken.

Benefield traced his man to Newport, and there arrested him with piactically no evidence. He searched for the stolen property, but found none. He dug up the garden, and visited the neighboring coal levels.

On the third night of an unremitting quest, which covered the two towns of Newport and Cardiff, Benefield returned home, exhausted and beaten, and threw himself on the bed to sleep. Then it was that he saw the whole of the property in a dream, hidden under a heap of coal in one corner oi the tenement of the man whom he had arrested. So realistic was the'impression that it woke him up. His wife bade him sleep again. He ?lept, and once more was awakened by the grip of the same vision.

Jumping out of bed, he summoned his brother officer, and went to the cottage. The burglar's wife begged him not to move the coal he found there, but he took a shovel and shifted it, and upon prising up a paving stone brought into view exactly what he expected— the whole of the property, covered by a coarse apron, and buried in a hole fifteen inches deep and two and a-halr feet wide.

With the treasure he also found a butcher's knife, and this the woman said her husband had carried with siim each time he visited the villa. He had declared that if anyone attempted to take him he would -'let them have the cold steel."

The thief -was tried at the Monmouth Assizes, and sentenced io tan years' penal servitude.