"The verra image o' the auld markis!" she said to herself; for in
the recesses of her bosom she spoke the Scotch she scorned to utter
aloud; "and sits jist like himsel', wi' a wee stoop i' the saiddle,
and ilka noo an' than a swing o' his haill boady back, as gien some
thoucht had set him straught.--Gien the fractious brute wad but
brak a bane or twa o' him!" she went on in growing anger. "The
impidence o' the fallow! He has his leave: what for disna he tak'
it an' gang? But oot o' this gang he sail. To ca' a man like mine a
heepocreet 'cause he wadna procleem till a haul market ilka secret
fau't o' the horse he had to sell! Haith, he cam' upo' the wrang
side o' the sheet to play the lord and maister here! and that I
can tell him!"

The mare was fresh, and the roads through the policy hard both
by nature and by frost, so that he could not let her go, and had
enough to do with her. He turned, therefore, towards the sea gate,
and soon reached the shore. There, westward of the Seaton, where
the fisher folk lived, the sand lay smooth, flat, and wet along the
edge of the receding tide: he gave Kelpie the rein, and she sprang
into a wild gallop, every now and then flinging her heels as high
as her rider's head. But finding, as they approached the stony
part from which rose the great rock called the Bored Craig, that
he could not pull her up in time, he turned her head towards the
long dune of sand which, a little beyond the tide, ran parallel
with the shore. It was dry and loose, and the ascent steep. Kelpie's
hoofs sank at every step, and when she reached the top, with wide
spread struggling haunches, and "nostrils like pits full of blood
to the brim," he had her in hand. She stood panting, yet pawing
and dancing, and making the sand fly in all directions.