It so preyed on his mind that its effect was, in Scott's words, to "torture to death one of the most soft-hearted and sensitive of God's creatures." On the very day of the King's arrival he died, after high fever and delirium had set in, and his funeral, which Scott attended, followed in due course.

"I am not aware," says Lockhart, "that I ever saw Scott in such a state of dejection as he was when I accompanied him and his friend Mr.Thomas Thomson from Edinburgh to Queensferry in attendance upon Lord Kinedder's funeral.

Yet that was one of the noisiest days of the royal festival, and he had to plunge into some scene of high gaiety the moment after we returned.

As we halted in Castle Street, Mr.Crabbe's mild, thoughtful face appeared at the window, and Scott said, on leaving me, 'Now for what our old friend there puts down as the crowning curse of his poor player in _The Borough_:-- "To hide in rant the heart-ache of the night."'" There is pathos in the recollection that just ten years later when Scott lay in his study at Abbotsford--the strength of that noble mind slowly ebbing away--the very passage in _The Borough_ just quoted was one of those he asked to have read to him.

It is the graphic and touching account in Letter XII.