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withdrawn.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, but the figure of a man that loomed
from the shadow. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and the room was so
dark that he could only see that someone was there, but could not tell
who it was or by what name he would be called. Then the moon struggled
out from behind her covering, and sent a shaft of light into the
gloomy chamber, with its dark draping and heavy carved furniture. With
the coming of the light Claverhouse, who was not unaccustomed to
ghostly sights, for they were his heritage, raised himself in bed, and
knowing no fear looked steadily. What he saw thrown into relief
against the shadows wa