"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 had fallen at Drumclog, I had not troubled thee or any of thy kind."
"Nor had I been minded or allowed to visit thee, John Graham, if I had fallen in fair fight, contending for Christ's crown and the liberty of the Scots Kirk, but these wounds upon my head and breast speak not of war, but of murder. Because thou didst murder Christ's confessors, and the souls of the martyrs cry from beneath the altar, I am come to show thee things which are to be and the doing of Him who saith, 'I will avenge.' Ye have often said go, and he goeth, and come and he cometh, but this nicht ye will come with me, and see things that will shake even thy bold heart." And so in vision they went.
Claverhouse was standing in a country kirkyard, and at the hour of sunset. Round him were ancient graves with stones whose inscriptions had been worn away by rough weather, and upon which the grass was growing rank. They were the resting-places of past generations whose descendants had died out, and whose names were forgotten in the land where once they may have been mighty people. Before him was a burying-place he knew, for it belonged to his house. There lay his father, and there he had laid his mother, the Lady Magdalene Graham, to rest, taken as he often thought from the evil to come. The ground had been stirred again, and there was another grave. It was of tiny size, not that of a man or woman, but of a child, and one that had died in its infancy. It was carefully tended, as if the mother still lived and had not yet forgotten her child. At the sight of it Claverhouse turned to the figure by his side.
