De Ginckel, the Dutch Earl of Athlone, Sir John Lamer, and Colonel Langstone, with six regiments of horse and dragoons, and Major Maitland with a brigade of the renegade Scottish Guards, were pressing forward by various routes to intercept and cut them off. No man dared, on peril of his life, to straggle from the ranks; for, as Scotsmen and Loyalists, they were doubly enemies to the English peasantry, who would infallibly have murdered any that fell into their hands, as they had done all the Scottish wounded and stragglers after the battle of Worcester. And thus, animated by anxiety, hope, and the exhortations of the gallant Dunbarton and his cavaliers, they marched--all heavily accoutred as they were--with such amazing rapidity, that, long ere daybreak, they had left Bury St. Edmunds, with its ancient spire and once magnificent abbey, twenty miles behind them. Making detours through the fields, cutting a passage through walls, hedges, and fences, they avoided every town and village, and more than once were brought to a halt by Gavin, who led the avant guard, declaring that he saw helmets glittering in the light of the waning moon. They forded the waters of the Lark, and the cold grey light of the winter morning began to brighten the level horizon, throwing forward in dark relief the distant trees and village spires, as they came in sight of Ely, without having encountered their Dutch or English foemen. The cold was intense; and the same white frost that powdered the grassy lawns and leafless trees encrusted the iron helmets and corslets of the soldiers, whose breath curled from their close ranks like smoke from a fire. To Scotsmen even the most hilly parts of the landscape appeared almost a dead level, where Ely, with its fine cathedral and street, that straggled on each side of the roadway, seemed floating in a sea of white mist, through which the Ouse wound like a golden thread. Shorn of its beams by the thick winter haze, the morning sun, like a luminous ball of glowing crimson, ascended slowly into its place, and the great tower and pinnacles of Ely Cathedral gleamed in its light as if their rich Gothic carving had been covered with the richest gilding, and the tall traceried windows shone like plates of burnished gold. The Reverend Dr. Joram, who had dashed forward with cocked pistols to reconnoitre, returned to report, with military precision, that "it was a fair city, open, without cannon or fortifications of any kind; and that, if it contained soldiers, they kept no watch or ward. And I pray Heaven," he added, "we may get wherewith to break our fast." "We will march in with drums beating," said the Earl. "Allons, mon tambour Major! Give us the old Scottish march, with which stout James of Hepburn so often scared the Imperialists in their trenches on the Oder and the Maine."