"For Aikwood, ho!" shouted Dan and his companions, as they took the rear of the four sable dignitaries; and striking the spurs into their steeds all at the same time, they went off at their horses' utmost speed, but in a short time the four yeomen were distanced. The black steeds and their riders went at such a pace as warrior had never before witnessed. Up by the side of Hindly-burn they sped, with the most rapid velocity,--over mire, over ditch, over ford, without stay or stumble. Dan and his companions posted on behind, sparing neither whip nor spur, for they were affronted that these gownsmen should display more energy in their master's cause, and the cause of his friends, than they should do themselves. But their horses floundered, and blew, and snorted, and puffed, and whisked their tails with a whistling sound, and still lagged farther and farther behind. "Come, come, callants," cried Dan to his companions, "let us rein up. These bedesmen's horses are ower weel fed for our bog-trotting nags. They fly like the wind. Od, we may as weel try to ride wi' the devil." "Whisht, whisht," said Will Martin; "I dinna like to mak ower familiar wi' that name now-a-days. We never ken wha's hearing us in this country." They were nigh to the heights when these words passed, and the four black horsemen perceiving them to take it leisurely, they paused and wheeled about, and the majestic primate taking off his cornuted chaperon, waved it aloft, and called aloud, "For shame, sluggish hinds! Why won't you speed, before the hour of prevention is lost? For Aikwood, ho, I say!" As he said these words, his black courser plunged and reared at a fearful rate; and, as our troopers thought, at one bolt sprung six or seven yards from the ground. The marks of that black horse's hoofs remain impressed in the sward to this day, and the spot is still called _The Abbot's lee_. At least it had been so called when Isaac the curate wrote this history. To keep clear of the wood that was full of thickets, they turned a little to the left, and pursued their course; and the ground becoming somewhat firmer, our yeomen pursued hard after them. But on coming over the steep brow of a little hill, the latter perceived a mountain lake of considerable extent that interrupted their path, and, to their utter astonishment, the four black horsemen going straight across it, at about the same rate that the eagle traverses the firmament. "The loch is frozen and bears over," said Dan: "Let us follow them across." "The loch is frozen indeed," said Will Martin, "but, ony man may see, that ice winna bear a cat."