The mansion-house of Knockhill, in the parish of Hoddom, was the scene of a tragedy in the earlier part of last century, which had the sequence of ghost visitation. It is referred to in the "Irvings of Hoddom," an interesting contribution to the family history of the district. Shortly the story is as follows:--A young man named Bell who had been surreptitiously visiting his sweetheart, one of the maids in the house, was heard by the butler, who shot him as he was escaping through a basement window. The butler was tried and acquitted, but Knockhill was afterwards haunted by the ghost of the victim so much that servants would not remain. At last the proprietor, then a Mr Scott, asked the Rev. W. Wallace Duncan, then helper to Mr Yorstoun, parish minister, to sleep in the house, with the result, it is told, that from then the ghost disappeared from Knockhill.(89) In this same parish of Hoddom, the student of Carlyle will remember that "old John Orr," the only schoolmaster that Carlyle's father ever had, "laid a ghost." It was in "some house or room at Orchard, in the parish of Hoddom. He entered the haunted place, was closeted in it for some time, speaking and praying. The ghost was really and truly laid, for no one heard more of it."(90) Bonshaw Tower, on the Kirtle (parish of Annan), the original home of the Irvings, also contributes to the ghost-lore of the district. Tradition tells that a daughter of the house was thrown from the battlements of the Tower by her own relatives, whom she had deeply incensed by her determination to marry a "Maxwell," with which family the Irvings held long and bitter feud. It is, or rather was, the ghost of this young lady who haunted the Tower of Bonshaw, but she has not been visible within living memory. Blackett Tower, also on the Kirtle (parish of Kirkpatrick-Fleming), was a border fortress well known in the records of border raid and foray. It was for long the home of the family of Bell. The ruined tower has a ghost legend which claims it as the abode of a spectre known as "Old Red-Cap, or Bloody Bell." A poetical descriptive reference to the tower and its phantom occurs in the poem of "Fair Helen." The passage is of undoubted vigour and masterly touch, and is here given, the author, William Scott Irving, at the same time offering the opinion "that the legends and anecdotes of 'Bloody Bell' would fill a large quarto volume":