oung girl returned to Blair. As she drew near the village, she
perceived Lord George Murray, Lord Nairn, Clunie Macpherson and other
officers standing in the churchyard of Blair; and observed that they
were evidently diverted by her errand, and its result.[182]

From that time Lord George Murray made no attempt to hold any parley
with the garrison, but continued to blockade the Castle. His men were
even posted close up against the walls, wherever they could not be
annoyed with the musketry; particularly at that part on which the
scaffold guard was placed, where they stood, heaving up stones from time
to time, and uttering their jokes against the veteran, Sir Andrew
Agnew.[183]

"The cannon," as Lord George Murray observes in his narrative, "were not
only small, but bad. One of them seldom hit the Castle, though not
half-musket shot from it."

Various schemes were formed by Lord George during this siege, but many
obstacles concurred to check them. It had indeed been proposed before
Lord George left Inverness, to blow up Blair Castle; but not only had
Lord George no orders to attempt that, but there seemed also to be a
difficulty from the situation of the place.

It appeared at one time his intention, also, to have set the building on
fire. "On the eighteenth," writes Lord Elcho, "Lord George began to fire
against the Castle with two four pounders; and as he had a furnace along
with him, finding his bullets were too small to damage the walls, he
endeavoured by firing red hot balls to set the house on fire, and
several times set the roof on fire, but by the care of the besieged it
was always extinguished. A constant fire of small arms was kept against
the windows, and the besieged kept a close fire from the castle with
their small arms." "As the castle," continues the same writer, "is
situated upon rocky ground, there was no blowing it up; so the only
chance Lord George had to get possession of it was to starve it, which
he had some hopes of, as there were so many mouths in it." From this
opinion, the judgment of Lord George Murray, in some measure, differed.
"It might, I believe," he says, "have been entered by the old stables,
under protection of which the wall could have been undermined, if I had
been furnished with proper workmen." But all his efforts, in both these
schemes, proved ineffectual. The red hot balls lodging in the solid
timbers of the roof, only charred, and did not ignite the beams; and
falling down,