Book 4 Chapter 2 Visions of the Night

Yet more imperious and irresistible is the impression of sunset as Dundee saw the closing pageant of the day on the last evening of his life. When first he looked the green plain was flooded with gentle light which turned into gold the brown, shaggy Highland cattle scattered among the grass, and made the river as it flashed out and in among the trees a chain of silver, and took the hardness from the jagged rocks that emerged from the sides of the hills. As the sun entered in between high banks of cloud, the light began to fade from the plain, and it touched the river no more; but above the clouds were glowing and reddening like a celestial army clad in scarlet and escorting home to his palace a victorious general. In a few minutes the sun has disappeared, and the red changes into violet and delicate, indescribable shades of green and blue, like the color of Nile water. Then there is a faint flicker, sudden and transient, from the city into which the sun has gone, and the day is over. As the monarch of the day withdraws, the queen of the night takes possession, and Claverhouse, leaning his chin upon his hand and gazing from the sadness of his eyes across the valley, saw the silver light, clear, beautiful, awful, flood the mountains and the level ground below, till the outstanding hills above, and the cattle which had lain down to rest in the meadow, were thrown out as in an etching, with exact and distinct outlines.