in the moment of his mad jealousy and her unquenchable anger. To-morrow he would submit to the final arbitrament of arms the cause for which he had lived, and for which the presentiment was upon him that he would die, and the quarrel begun between him and MacKay fifteen years ago, between the sides they represent centuries ago, would be settled. If the years had been given back to him to live again, he would not have had them otherwise. Destiny had settled for him his politics and his principles, for he could not leave the way in which Montrose had gone before, or be the comrade of Covenanting Whigs. It would have been a thing unnatural and impossible. And yet he feared that the future was with them and not with the Jacobites. He only did his part in arresting fanatical hillmen and executing the punishment of the law upon them, but he would have been glad that night if he had not been obliged to shoot John Brown of Priest Hill before his wife's eyes, and keep guard at the scaffold from which Pollock went home to God. He had never loved any other woman than Jean Cochrane, and they were well mated in their high temper of nature, but their marriage had been tempestuous, and he was haunted with vague misgivings. What light was given him he had followed, but there was little to show for his life. His king had failed him, his comrades had distrusted him, his nation hated him. His wife--had she forgiven him, and was she true-hearted to him still? Behind high words of loyalty and hope his heart had been sinking, and now it seemed to him in the light of eternal judgment, wherein there is justice but no charity, that his forty years had failed and were leaving behind them no lasting good to his house or to his land. The moonlight shining full upon Claverhouse shows many a line now on the smoothness of his fair girl face, and declares his hidden, inextinguishable sorrow, who all his days had been an actor in a tragedy. He had written to the chiefs that all the world was with him, but in his heart he knew that it was against him, and perhaps also God.
Once and again Grimond had come into the gallery to summon his master to rest, but seeing him absorbed in one of his reveries had quietly withdrawn. Full of anxiety, for he knows what the morrow will mean, that faithful servitor at last came near and rustled to catch his master's ear.
"Jock," said Claverhouse, startling and rising to his feet, "is that you, man, coming to coax me to my bed as ye did lang syne, when ye received me first from my nurse's hands? It's getting late, and I am needing rest for to-morrow's work, if I can get it. We have come to Armageddon, as the preachers would say, and mony things for mony days hang on the issue. All a man can do, Jock, is to walk in the road that was set before him from a laddie, and to complete the task laid to his hand. What will happen afterwards doesna concern him, so be it he is faithful. Where is my room? And, hark ye, Jock, waken me early, and be not far from me through the night, for I can trust you altogether. And there be not mony true."
Worn out with a long day in the saddle, and the planning of the evening together with many anxieties, and the inward tumult of his mind, Claverhouse fell asleep. He was resting so quietly that Grimond, who had gone to the door to listen, was satisfied and lay down to catch an hour or two of sleep for himself, for he could waken at any hour he pleased, and knew that soon after daybreak he must be stirring. While he was nearby heavy with sleep, his master, conscious or unconscious, according as one judges, was in the awful presence of the unseen. He woke suddenly, as if he had been called, and knew that someone was in the room, but also in the same instant that it was not Grimond or any visitor of flesh and blood. Twice had the wraith of the Grahams appeared to him, and always before a day of danger, but this time it was no sad, beautiful woman's face, carrying upon its weird grace the sorrows of his line,