As Wat and I went towards the great house in the early gloaming, we became aware of a single horseman riding toward us and gaining on us from behind. At the first sound of the trampling of his horse, Wat dived at once over the turf dyke and vanished. "Bide you!" he said. "He'll no ken you!" A slender-like figure in a grey cavalry cloak and a plain hat without a feather, came, slowly riding alongside of me, in an attitude of the deepest thought. I knew at a glance that it was John Graham of Claverhouse, whom all the land of the South knew as "the Persecutor." "Are you one of Balmaghie's servants?" he asked. I took off my bonnet, showing as I did so my shaven poll, and answered him that I was. No other word he uttered, though he eyed me pretty closely and uncomfortably, as if he had a shrewd thought that he had seen me before elsewhere. But the shaven head and the absence of hair on my face were a complete disguise. For, indeed, though Maisie Lennox made little of it, the fact was that I had at the time quite a strong crop of hair upon both my chin and upper lip. Claverhouse waved me behind him with the graceful and haughty gesture, which they say he constantly used even to the Secretary in Council, when he was hot with him in the matter of the house and lands of Dudhope. Meekly enough I trudged behind the great commander of horse, and looked with much curiosity and some awe both upon him and on his famous steed "Boscobel," which was supposed by the more ignorant of the peasantry to be the foul fiend in his proper person. So in this manner we came to the house. The lights were just beginning to shine, for Alisoun Begbie, the maid of the table, was just arranging the candles. At the doorway the master of the house met his guest, having been drawn from his library by the feet of the charger clattering upon the pavement of the yard. "Ah, John," he said, "this is right gracious of you, in the midst of your fighting and riding, to journey over to cheer an old hulk like me!" And he reached him a hand to the saddle, which Claverhouse took without a word. But I saw a look of liking, which was almost tender, in the war-captain's eyes as I passed round by the further door into the kitchen. Here I was roughly handled by the cook--who, of course, had not been informed of my personality, and who exercised upon me both the length of her tongue and the very considerable agility thereof. But Alisoun Begbie, who was, as I say, principal waiting-maid, rescued me and in pity took me under her protection; though with no suspicion of my quality, but only from a maidish and natural liking for a young and unmarried man. She offered very kindly to show me all my duties, and, indeed, I had been in a sorry pass that night without her help.