It is written in an ancient book "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning," and with the brief darkness of the summer night passed the shadow from Claverhouse's soul. According, also, to the brightness and freshness of the early sunshine was his high hope on the eventful day, which was to decide both the fate of his king and of himself. The powers of darkness had attacked him on every side, appealing to his fear and to his faith, to his love and to his hate, to his pride and to his jealousy, to see whether they could not shake his constancy and break his spirit. They had failed at every assault, and he had conquered; he had risen above his ghostly enemies and above himself, and now, having stood fast against principalities and powers of the other world, he was convinced that his earthly enemies would be driven before him as chaff before the wind.
He knew exactly what MacKay and his army could do, and what he and his army could, in the place of issue, where, by the mercy of God, Who surely was on the side of His anointed, the battle would be fought. What would avail MacKay's parade-ground tactics and all the lessons of books, and what would avail the drilling and the manoeuvring of his hired automatons in the pass of Killiecrankie, with its wooded banks and swift running river, and narrow gorge and surrounding hills? This was no level plain for wheeling right and wheeling left, for bombarding with artillery and flanking by masses of cavalry. Claverhouse remembers the morning of the battle of Seneffe, when he rode with Carleton and longed to be on the hills with a body of Highlanders, and have the chance of taking by surprise the lumbering army of the Prince of Orange and sweeping it away by one headlong charge. The day for this onslaught had come, and by an irony, or felicity, of Providence, he has the troops he had longed for and his rival has the inert and helpless regulars.
News had come that MacKay was marching with phlegmatic steadiness and perfect confidence into the trap, and going to place himself at the greatest disadvantage for his kind of army. The Lord was giving the Whigs into his hand, and they would fall before the sun set, as a prey unto his sword. The passion of battle was in his blood, and the laurels of victory were within his reach. Graham forgot his bitter disappointments and cowardly friends, the weary journeys and worse anxieties of the past weeks, the cunning cautiousness of the chiefs and their maddening jealousies. Even the pitiable scene at Glenogilvie and his gnawing vain regret faded for the moment from his memory and from his heart. If the Lowlands had been cold as death to the good cause, the Highlands had at last taken fire; if he had not one-tenth the army he should have commanded, had every Highlander shared his loyalty to the ancient line, he had sufficient for the day's work. If he had spoken in vain to the king at Whitehall and miserably failed to put some spirit into his timid mind, and been outvoted at the Convention, and been driven from Edinburgh by Covenanting assassins and hunted like a brigand by MacKay's troops, his day had now come. He was to taste for the first time the glorious cup of victory. He had not been so glad or confident since his marriage day, when he snatched his bride from the fastness of his enemy, and as Grimond helped him to arm, and gave the last touches to his martial dress, he jested merrily with that solemn servitor, and sang aloud to Grimond's vast dismay, who held the good Scottish faith that if you be quiet Providence may leave you alone, but if you show any sign of triumph it will be an irresistible temptation to the unseen powers.