"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."
"Haud your tongue, you gouk," said Dan: "Do ye think the thing that bore them winna bear us?" And as he spurred foremost down the steep, he took the lake at the broad side; but the ice offering no manner of resistance, horse and man were in one moment out of sight. The sable horsemen on the other side shouted with laughter, and called aloud to the troopers, "to venture on, and haste forward, for the ice was sufficiently strong."
The bold trooper and his horse were extricated with some difficulty, and the monks testifying the utmost impatience he remounted, dripping as he was, and not being able to find the passage across the lake on the ice, he and his companions gallopped around the head of it. As he rode, the morning being frosty, he chanced to utter these words: "Heigh-ho, but I be a cauld cheil!" Which words, says Isaac, gave the name to that lake and the hill about it to all future ages; and from those perilous days of witchcraft and divination, and the shocking incidents that befel to men, adds he, have a great many of the names of places all over our country had their origin.
The dark horsemen always paused until the troopers were near them, as if to encourage them on, but they never suffered them to join company. When they came over a ridge above old Lindean they were hard upon them, but lost sight of them for a short space on the height; and, coming on full speed, they arrived on the brink of a deep wooded dell, and to their utter astonishment saw the four gownsmen on the other side, riding deliberately along, and beckoning them forward.
"I am sair mista'en," said Will Martin, "gin thae chaps hae nae gaen ower the cleugh at ae bound. An it warna for their habits I wad take them for something nouther good nor cannie."
"Haud your tongue, or else speak feasible things," said Dan; "Can the worthy Father Lawrence, and his chief priors and functionaries ever be suspected as warlocks, or men connected wi' the devil and his arts. If sic were to be the case, we hae nae mair trust to put in aught on this earth. The dell maun be but a step across. Here is a good passable road; come, let us follow them.
Dan led the way, and they dived into the dell by a narrow track, rather like a path for a wild goat than men and horses; however, by leaping, sliding, and pushing one another's horses behind, they got to the bottom of the precipice, and perceiving a path on the other side, they expected to reach the western brink immediately. But in this they were mistaken; abrupt rocks, and impenetrable thickets barred their progress on every side, and they found it impossible to extricate themselves without leaving their horses. They tried every quarter with the same success, and at the last attempted to ascend by the way they came; but that too they found impracticable, and all the while they heard the voices of their fellow travellers chiding their stay from above, and shaming them for their stupidity in taking the wrong path. At one time they heard them calling on them to come this way, here was an excellent out-gate; and when the toiled yeomen stuck fairly still in that direction, they instantly heard other voices urging them to ascend by some other quarter. At other times they thought they heard restrained bursts of giggling laughter. After a great deal of exertion to no manner of purpose, they grew they neither knew what to do nor what they were doing, and at last were obliged to abandon their horses, and climb the ascent by hanging by the bushes and roots of trees. When they emerged from the deep hollow, they perceived eight black horsemen awaiting them instead of four; but as the country around Melrose and Dryburgh swarmed with members of the holy brotherhood of every distinction and rank, the troopers took no notice of it, thinking these were some of the head functionaries come to wait on their abbot. The latter chided our yeomen in sharp and resentful language for their utter stupidity in taking the wrong path, and regretted exceedingly the long delay their mistake had occasioned, his time he said being limited, as was also the time that his power prevailed in a more particular way over the powers of darkness. "For us to go alone," added he, "would signify nothing. The manual labour of breaking through the iron gates we cannot perform; therefore, unless you can keep up with us, we may return home by the way we came."