ch is said to have suggested the touching
particulars of the deathbed of Chrystal Croftangry's benefactor (not
'the elder Croftangry,' as is said in a letter quoted by Lockhart), and
was repeated to some extent in Scott's own case.

His appointment to the Sheriff[depute]ship of Selkirkshire was made in
December 1799, and gave, for light work, three hundred a year. It need
not have interfered with even an active practice at the Bar had such
fallen to him, and at first did not impose on him even a partial
residence. The Lord-Lieutenant, however, Lord Napier of Ettrick,
insisted on this, and though Scott rather resented a strictness which
seems not to have been universal, he had to comply. He did not, however,
do so at once, and during the last year of the century and its two
successors, Lasswade and Castle Street were Scott's habitats, with
various radiations; while in the spring of 1803 he and Mrs. Scott
repeated their visit to London and extended it to Oxford. It is not
surprising to read his confession in sad days, a quarter of a century
later, of the 'ecstatic feeling' with which he first saw this, the place
in all the island which was his spiritual home. The same year saw the
alarm of invasion which followed the resumption of hostilities after the
armistice of Amiens; and Scott's attention to his quartermastership,
which he still held, seems to have given Lord Napier the idea that he
was devoting himself, not only _tam Marti quam Mercurio_, but to Mars
rather at Mercury's expense.[7] Scott, however, was never fond of being
dictated to, and he and his wife were still at Lasswade when the
Wordsworths visited them in the autumn, though Scott accompanied them to
his sheriffdom on their way back to Westmoreland. He had not yet wholly
given up practice, and though its rewards were not munificent, they
reached about this time, it would seem, their maximum sum of L218,
which, in the days of his fairy-money, he must often have earned by a
single morning's work.

Lord Napier, by no means improperly (for it was a legal requirement,
though often evaded, that four months' residence per annum should be
observed), persisted; and Scott, after a pleasing but impracticable
dream of taking up his summer residence in the Tower of Harden itself,
which was offered to him, took a lease of Ashestiel, a pleasant country
house,--'a decent farmhouse,' he calls it, in his usual way,--the owner
of which was his relation, and absent in India. Th