Statements concerning Sir Walter Scott. 269 



and who had made himself very pleasant while staying in 

 the house there. 



On the second night, not the first, Lady Scott was so 

 frightened that Sir Walter took down his great-grandfather's 

 broadsword and went through the empty rooms, finding no 

 one, though the sound, he says, had exactly resembled that 

 of half-a-dozen men hard at work putting up boards and 

 furniture. The reason why they did not think much of it 

 the first night is explained by what was remembered in 

 the country, that they fully thought the servants were 

 holding high jinks in the newly-built part of the house. 

 Lady Scott had them up the next morning to scold them for 

 making such a disturbance, but they succeeded in convincing 

 her that none of them had been there. 



These noises took place, on both nights, about two o'clock 

 in the morning, and Bullock died about that hour in 

 London ; but nobody at present knows whether he died on 

 the first or the second night (that is, on the morning of the 

 29th or of the 30th of April 1818.) 



I am almost convinced that it was the first, from Lock- 

 hart's saying, that the occurrence had impressed Sir Walter 

 much more than appears from his letter ; while indeed it 

 is evident enough, from that, that he connected the noises 

 with the death. Myers and Gurney state that the death 

 took place on the second night, and therefore that the noises 

 could have had no connection with it ; but the only ground 

 I can see for this supposition is that, Lockhart says, the 

 death took place at the same hour when Sir Walter sallied 

 from his chamber with Beardie's Killiecrankie claymore. It 

 is difficult for enquirers of the present day to believe that 

 a writer of the period of Macaulay and Carlyle would be 

 capable of saying at the same hour, with necessarily meaning 

 that it was the same night ! 



It is possible that Lockhart himself never knew on which 

 night the death took place ; he was not acquainted with Sir 

 Walter at the time, having been introduced to him, as he 

 records, about a month after this. 



Mr Andrew Lang, when he edited the Secret Commonwealth, 

 had not been able to settle the point about the death ; and 

 I have myself ascertained that there is no mention of it in 

 the file of the Times at the British Museum, searching up 



