58th Regiment of Foot. The battalion comprising nine companies and were initially based in Lisbon as a protection force. The battalion was headquartered at Vila Nova and then moved northwards in autumn 1810 to the Lines of Torres Vedras. It was whilst protecting "The Lines" he describes in a letter to Scott receiving a copy of The Lady of the Lake and reading Canto Vi to his soldiers whilst under cannon fire. In April 1812 the regiment was involved in the Battle of Salamanca. For his actions he later received the Salamanca bar on his Peninsular war medal. He was taken prisoner during Wellington's retreat from Burgos in autumn 1812, held prisoner in a town in the Auvergne, and was not released till the peace of 1814. As a prisoner of the Napoleonic Army, despite suffering some hardships, he was accorded some favour from Napoleon for the sake of his father's first cousin Joseph Black M.D. On 8 October 1816 he went on half-pay and appointed to the 101st Regiment on disbandment. Life with Sir Walter Scott In the summer of 1817 Ferguson accompanied Scott in an excursion to the Lennox, with the main aim of visiting Rob Roy's cave at the head of Loch Lomond. In the following year he and his sisters took up their residence in the mansion-house of Toftfield, which Scott had recently purchased, and on which, at the ladies' request, he bestowed the name of Huntlyburn. On 19 August 1818 Ferguson, mainly through the exertions of Scott, was appointed keeper of the Scottish Regalia, which then had recently been re-discovered. About this time, Ferguson commissioned Sir David Wilkie to paint the Scott family resulting in the painting The Abbotsford Family in which Scott and his family are represented as a group of peasants and Ferguson as a gamekeeper or poacher. Ferguson is seen standing to the right of Scott with the feather in his cap. In 1819 Ferguson, in the capacity of secretary, accompanied Scott's friend, Charles Montagu Scott, 4th Duke of Buccleuch, then in declining health, to Lisbon. In 1821 he married the widow of George Lyon of London, and daughter of John Stewart of Stenton, Perthshire. They lived at Gattonside House between 1821 and 1824. On the occasion of the visit of King George IV to Scotland he was knighted at Hopetoun House on 29 August 1822.They later return to Huntlyburn and are