s the figure of a hillman of the west, and one
that in an instant he knew. The Covenanter was dressed in rough
homespun hodden gray, stained heavily with the black of the peat
holes in which he had been hiding, and torn here and there where the
rocks had caught him as he was crawling for shelter. Of middle age,
with hair hanging over his ears and beard uncared for, his face bore
all the signs of hunger and suffering, as of one who had wanted right
food and warmth and every comfort of life for months on end. In his
eyes glowed the fire of an intense and honest, but fierce and narrow
piety, and with that expression was mingled another, not of anger nor
of sorrow, but of reproach, of judgment and of sombre triumph. His
hands were strapped in front of him with a stirrup leather, and his
head was bare. As the moon shone more clearly, Claverhouse saw other
stains than those of peat upon his chest, and while he looked the red
blood seemed to rise from wounds that pierced his heart and lungs, it
flowed out again in a trickling stream, and dripped upon the whiteness
of his hands. More awful still, there was a wound in his forehead, and
part of his head was shattered. The scene had never been absent long
from Claverhouse's memory, and now he reacted it again. How this man
had been caught after a long pursuit, upon the moor, how he had stood
bold and unrepentant before the man that had power of life and death
over him, how he refused to take the oath of loyalty to the king, how
he had been shot dead before his cottage, and how his wife had been
spectator of her husband's death.

"Ye have not forgot me, John Graham of Claverhouse, nor the deed which
ye did at Priest Hill in the West Country. I am John Brown, whom ye
caused to be slain for the faith of the saints and their testimony,
and whom ye set free from the bondage of man forever. Behold, I have
washed my robes and made them white in better blood than this, but I
am sent in the garment o' earth, sair stained wi' its defilement, and
in my ain unworthy blude, that ye may ken me and believe that I am
sent."

"What I did was according to law," answered Claverhouse, unshaken by
the sight, "and in the fulfilling of my commission, though God knows I
loved not the work, and have oftentimes regretted thy killing. For
that and all the deeds of this life I shall answer to my judge and not
to man. What wilt thou have with me, what hast thou to do with me? Had
it been the other way and I