I will ask of you this last courtesy, for your sake
and mine and that of the two Englishmen, that ye tell me the
truth.

I salute you before we fight and I have the honor to be,

Your most obedient servant,

DUNDEE.

CHAPTER II

VISIONS OF THE NIGHT

Upon the highest floor of Blair Castle there was a long and
spacious apartment, like unto the gallery in Paisley Castle, where
John Graham had been married to Jean Cochrane, and which to-day is
the drawing-room. To this high place Claverhouse climbed from the room
where he had examined the two Englishmen, and here he passed the
last hours of daylight on the day before the battle of Killiecrankie.
Seating himself at one of the windows, he looked out towards the
west, through whose golden gates the sun had begun to enter.
Beneath lay a widespreading meadow which reached to the Garry;
beyond the river the ground began to rise, and in the distance were
the hills covered with heather, with lakes of emerald amid the
purple. There are two hours of the day when the soul of man is
powerfully affected by the physical world in which we live, and in
which, indeed, the things we see become transparent, like a thin
veil, and through them the things which are not seen stream in upon
the soul. One is sunrise, when there is first a grayness in the
east, and then the clouds begin to redden, and afterwards a joyful
brightness heralds the appearing of the sun as he drives in rout the
reluctant rearguard of the night. The most impressive moment is
when all the high lands are bathed in soft, fresh, hopeful sunshine,
but the glens are still lying in the cold and dank shadow, so that
one may suddenly descend from a place of brightness, where he has
been in the eye of the sun, to a land of gloom, which the sun has not
yet reached. Sunrise quickens the power that has been sleeping,
and calls a man in high hope to the labor of the day, for if there
be darkness lingering in the glen, there is light on the lofty
table-lands, and soon it will be shining everywhere, when the sun
has reached his meridian. And it puts heart into a man to come over
the hill and down through the hollows when the sun is rising, for
though the woods be dark and chill, the traveller is sure of the
inevitable victory of the light.

Yet more imperious and irresistible is the impression of sunset as
Dundee saw the closing pagea