CARETAKER'S DREAM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14142, 18 August 1909, Page 8

CARETAKER'S DREAM.

A PATHETIC DISCOVERY.

The body of the unfortunate woman, Mrs. Penney, who was missing from the Lower Hutfc since yesterday fortnight, was discovered on (he top of a ridge overlooking York Bay, adjacent to Lowry Bay (Wellington). It is considered that she had been dead for eight or nine days ; if so, she must have been wandering about the hilltops, exposed to the wintry weather for four or five days, hatless, and only lightly clad. A peculiar circumstance lies in the fact that the discovery of the body- is attributed to a dream which came to Mr. Hugh Downes, caretaker of the Day's Bay estate. He states that he went straight to the spot and found the body in precisely the position he had expected. Several parties were out on Monday,- including Mr. Downes' party. In consequence of the dream, Mr. Downes says, he and two others surmounted the ridge about York Bay, a distance of about four miles from Day's Bay. They examined a couple of spurs, and found Mrs. Penney's body on the top of the second one, not more than 30 chains away from the place where a towel Mrs. Penney was known to have taken with her was picked up. The sight was a pathetic one. The unfortunate woman had collected a few manuka branches apparently for the purpose of making a bed for herself in a small hollow a couple of yards below the top of the ridge. Her boots had been worn through. Mr. Downes thinks that she must have been very weak, and slipped from her bed of manuka, and was quite unable to get back through exhaustion. Her hair, which Mr. Trevethick described as black with a little gray in it, had turned to silver gray. Mr. Downes said, in concluding his story: "I do not think she had had anything to eat for days. She lay just as I expected to find her. I went straight to the spot. I had previously got a piece of Wood. through the palm of my right hand. One of my companions nearly fainted, and the other alone could not carry the body. So wo returned to Day's Bay without it."