Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/706

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DEVONSHIRE CHARACTERS

in which he thought that some one, in danger of death on the Dawlish road, was calling to him to come to his aid. So persuaded was the man that he was truly summoned, that he hastily dressed, saddled and mounted one of his master's horses, and proceeded along the road in the darkness, till his horse suddenly drew up and refused to proceed. Dismounting, he found a woman apparently dying in a channel of water furrowed deep across the highway. By this means her life was preserved.

The late Mr. Smith, of Exeter, proprietor of a muslin warehouse, in three successive dreams in the same night, which he separately repeated to his wife, was summoned to go at once to Bodmin. He obeyed, and on arriving there, heard that the assizes were being held. Out of curiosity he went into the court and heard the judge ask whether any one had seen the prisoner on the day and at the hour at which he was charged with having committed a murder in the west of Cornwall. Looking at the accused, Mr. Smith exclaimed, "Why! he was in my shop in Exeter on that very day." Through such conclusive evidence an alibi was established, and the prisoner was acquitted and discharged.

The Rev. Mr. Reynolds was master of the Grammar School, Exeter. He lost his wife, and after that, possibly because his spirits failed him and he lacked energy, the school declined seriously and he thought of giving it up. While he was debating this in his mind, one night he saw the figure of a woman stand by his bedside. She told him that she was his mother who had died in childbed at his birth, and that she had been suffered to come to him to encourage him, and bid him go on with the school, for that a notable improvement in his circumstances would take place if he