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, were caught up in iron ladles brought out of the Duke of Atholl's kitchen, and thrown into water. Disappointed in this attempt, Lord George removed his few field-pieces to a nearer position on the south side of the Castle, where, however, his firing produced no better effect than heretofore. Never was there an officer more insensible to fear than the defender of Blair. Whilst Lord George was thus ineffectually battering the walls of the house, Sir Andrew Agnew looked out over the battlements; and seeing the little impression that was made on the walls, he exclaimed, "Hout! I daresay the man's mad, knocking down his own brother's house."